Google reportedly announced on Thursday that it is preparing to move its Gemini app team to its artificial research lab, DeepMind. It had planned to reshuffle its product leadership team as well, Prabhakar Raghavan, who is a senior vice president at Google. Where he is responsible for Google Search, Assistant, Geo, Ads, Commerce, and Payments products, will move to the role of chief technologist. Nick Fox, a veteran Google executive who acted as a search deputy under Raghavan, will step into the role.
The shift “will improve feedback loops, enable fast deployment of our new models in the Gemini app,” CEO Sundar Pichai said in a blog post.
Meanwhile, two teams who are responsible for the current work of Google Assistant and the Gemini chatbot will be moved under the different work units. “AI moves faster than any technology before it. To keep increasing the pace of progress, we’ve been making shifts to simplify our structures along the way,” said Pichai in another post.
Gemini is the most advanced AI technology of multimodal large language models developed by Google DeepMind, serving as the successor to LaMDA and PaLM 2. It was announced on December 6, 2023, positioned as a competitor to OpenAI’s GPT-4.
According to reports, Sissie Hsiao is also being prepared to join Google DeepMind under the supervision of its CEO Demis Hassabis.
Google’s so many research labs have been converted into product driven companies now. Eli Collins, DeepMind’s vice president of product, said in an interview that DeepMind had to “pick up the pace” to stay in the AI market.
Over the past few months, Google has been struggling due to the loss in a trial with the US Justice Department. The claim was regarding the company’s illegal monopolizing of online search and advertising markets. Another trail is going on regarding the company’s dominance over the technology that used to buy and sell online ads, is still awaited for the final verdict.
