In Paris demo, Google scrambles to counter ChatGPT but ends up embarrassing itself
Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)
On Wednesday, Google held a highly anticipated press conference from Paris that did not deliver the decisive move against ChatGPT and the Microsoft-OpenAI partnership that many pundits expected. Instead, Google ran through a collection of previously announced technologies in a low-key presentation that included losing a demonstration phone.
The demo, which included references to many products that are still unavailable, occurred just hours after someone noticed that Google's advertisement for its newly announced Bard large language model contained an error about the James Webb Space Telescope. After Reuters reported the error, Forbes noticed that Google's stock price declined nearly 7 percent, taking about $100 billion in value with it.
On stage in front of a small in-person audience in Paris, Google Senior Vice President Prabhakar Raghavan and Google Search VP Liz Reid took turns showing a series of products that included "multisearch," an AI-powered visual search feature of Google Lens that lets users search by taking a picture and describing what they'd like to find, an "Immersive View" feature of Google Maps that allows a 3D fly-through of major cities, and a new version of Google Translate, along with a smattering of minor announcements.