Google thinks it has the best AI tech. Now it needs more users.

livemint.com:

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, recently told employees he believes the company’s Gemini AI technology has surpassed the capabilities of competitors. Google’s chief executive thinks his company has the best artificial-intelligence technology on the market.

Now he has to get consumers to care. CEO Sundar Pichai recently told employees he believes the company’s Gemini AI technology has surpassed the capabilities of competitors and he wants the chatbot built on it to be used by 500 million people by the end of 2025, said people familiar with the matter. Google hasn’t said how many people currently use Gemini, but market leader ChatGPT has about 300 million weekly users.

The Gemini app was the 54th most downloaded free app on iPhones Wednesday. ChatGPT was No. 4.

Google was caught flat-footed by the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, despite being one of the pioneers of AI and spending years working on similar chatbots. The company has been scrambling to catch up ever since. Gemini isn’t yet a serious moneymaker, but it is central to Google’s push to stay on the cutting edge of AI, a technology already starting to reshape the company’s core search and ads businesses.

Google’s newest AI technology jumped ahead of ChatGPT maker OpenAI’s technology last month on the Chatbot Arena rankings closely watched by people in Silicon Valley. OpenAI dominated the rankings for much of the past year. Google launched the Gemini chatbot, formerly Bard, a few months after ChatGPT and has updated it with dozens of new features in an effort to gain ground.