Google has long been developing software based on artificial intelligence that can talk to people. As early as spring 2018, the group demonstrated a program that called restaurants to make a reservation – and was not recognized as a computer. Criticism was immediately raised that such technology could be misused. Google has had its voice software used internally by employees for the past few years, but shied away from a broad market launch due to the risks.
In November 2022, OpenAI made its ChatGPT software public, which delivers texts in a few seconds that can hardly be distinguished from answers written by real people – also in German. The technology is causing a stir, but it is also causing concern: after all, you can try to cheat with it at school or university or create false information on a large scale for distribution on the Internet. ChatGPT also sometimes gives wrong answers, but this is not recognizable for users.
ChatGPT also strategically pressured Google to compete with Microsoft. The arch-rival, which has had moderate success with its search engine Bing, has invested billions in OpenAI and will integrate the start-up’s software into its successful Azure cloud platform.
