Move Over Metaverse. The Big Tech Arms Race is About AI.

With Google Bard and a New AI-Powered Bing and Edge from Microsoft, ChatGPT from OpenAI Suddenly Has Fierce Competition

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Philip Mandelbaum
02/08/2023

There’s no escape. Not from the amorphous metaverse, but from artificial intelligence. About two months after ChatGPT “unleashed itself” as a prototype, Google launched Bard and Microsoft followed quickly with a new, “AI-powered” version of Bing and Edge. And that really is OK. “AI helps people, businesses and communities unlock their potential” and “opens up new opportunities that could significantly improve billions of lives.” Plus, as you know, competition breeds innovation, so maybe all the concerns I have about ChatGPT will be addressed after all.

Today, the scale of the largest AI computations is doubling every six months, “far outpacing" Moore’s Law. And still nobody (sensible) is telling you to embrace the Great Resignation by replacing discontented workers with human-trained bots. What I’m telling you is that you could use AI to better understand your employees, enhance employee morale, and upgrade your recruitment marketing. And we all know employee experience is the new customer experience.

Facts are facts: AI tech can enhance business productivity by 40% — and businesses that employ AI will double their cash flow by 2030 while brands that don’t will see a 20% reduction. Already, more than three quarters of businesses are using or exploring AI; nearly three quarters of executives believe AI will be their greatest future business advantage; and by next year the global AI market is expected to exceed a half a trillion US dollars.

NASA aerial photo from space: Gulf of Mexico, United States

Fortunately for consumers and workers:

The number of AI startups has increased 1,400% since 2000, increasing the likelihood of thoughtfulness, empathy, diversity and inclusion in machine learning
AI will automate only 16% of American jobs
Only about one third of the C-suite sees AI primarily as its tool for optimizing internal operations
52% of experts believe that, overall, AI will increase the total number of employment opportunities
77% of the tools we’re already using leverage AI in one form or another

Breathe. This means you can invest in AI without igniting internal revolt. AI offers opportunities for all departments and levels of the organization.

I asked Shane Austrie, chief technology officer of Curastory, for some thoughts:

As we've seen from iOS 14.5, once we lose campaign measurability, company revenue plummets by double digits. Companies are no longer in the green by utilizing traditional ads platforms like Facebook Ads and Google Ads. This is why we need more advanced AI that is able to infer measurability without having all data points — something that human marketing managers can't do. An area where we've seen this succeed is in influencer marketing. Thanks to the AI advancement of marketing companies like Curastory, brands are now seeing over six times return on ad spend: a return on investment that hasn't been seen in the marketing world since 2020. And it's not only Curastory.

Indeed, I recently shared a list of 15 “must-have” AI tools (and best practices) covering all critical business areas, including chatbots, CRMs and CDPs, virtual assistants, project management, cybersecurity and data visualization tools, and new AI enablements for truly customer-centric design that can help you overcome the retirement of third-party cookies. And there are more.

But, first, let’s talk about Google’s and Microsoft’s latest forays into large language models (or LLMs, like ChatGPT).

A Google sign on the top of a building in Wrocław, Poland

Google Bard vs. Microsoft’s AI-Powered Bing and Edge

What is Google Bard?

Google “re-oriented the company around AI six years ago,” believing AI to be the best opportunity for delivering on its mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” So the number-one search engine provider was probably a little pissed that ChatGPT dropped first.

Either way, two years ago, Google “unveiled next-generation language and conversation capabilities” powered by LaMDA, its large language model for ‘dialogue applications.’ Over the last two years, the Big Tech behemoth has (ousted anyone concerned about its AI initiatives and) leveraged LaMDA to build “an experimental conversational AI service” known as Bard.

A screenshot of a sample query using Google Bard

Bard was released to “trusted testers” on February 6, 2023; according to Google/Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, Google will “combine external feedback” with internal testing results “to make sure Bard’s responses meet a high bar for quality, safety and groundedness in real-world information.” Then, “in the coming weeks,” the ChatGPT competitor will be made “more widely available to the public.” And “rolling out on Google Search soon,” we’ll “see AI-powered features… that distill complex information and multiple perspectives into easy-to-digest formats, so you can quickly understand the big picture and learn more from the web.”

Sounds promising. Now, what about Google competitor Microsoft and “your copilot for the web?”

What are Microsoft’s AI-powered Bing Search Engine and Edge Browser?

In short: an extension — or proof of concept — of OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT.

There are 10-billion search queries a day, and Bing estimates that “half of them go unanswered… because people are using search to do things it wasn’t originally designed to do.” This is why, on February 7, 2023, Microsoft launched “an all new, AI-powered Bing search engine and Edge browser.”

Doing a far better job than Google in organizing the content in its press release (funny, considering the value of SEO), Microsoft lists out the benefits you can expect from switching to the new Bing and Edge, including:

Better search, “running on a new, next generation OpenAI large language model that is more powerful than ChatGPT and customized specifically for search,” with “more relevant results” and “a new sidebar that shows more comprehensive answers if you want them”
Complete answers, further strengthening SERPs but damaging click-through rates for the top results that provide these answers on the search page itself
An improved browser user experience, with easily accessible AI tools for searching, chatting and composing (“Edge can understand the web page you’re on and adapts accordingly”)
“A creative spark” — or, if you’re cheap or your staff is lazy, actual content generation (a la ChatGPT)
A new, interactive chat experience for greater search refinement

A screenshot of a chat conversation using the new AI-powered Bing and Edge from Microsoft

How? According to Yusuf Mehdi, the brand’s corporate VP and consumer CMO, “[t]hese groundbreaking new search experiences are possible because Microsoft has committed to building Azure into an AI supercomputer for the world, and OpenAI has used this infrastructure to train the breakthrough models that are now being optimized for Bing.”

The new Bing is available now in a limited preview on desktop, and the Bing homepage offers sample queries and a waitlist signup; Microsoft will “scale the preview to millions in the coming weeks” and release a new mobile experience soon, as well.

In full disclosure, I haven’t used Bing since it launched (because Google works, no?), and even Mehdi admitted applying OpenAI’s model to its core search ranking engine “led to the largest jump in relevance in two decades” — truthfully, not something Google needs to worry about. But, I’ll give it a try, and so should you.

Alphabet may not be the company we were taught to think Google was. But then again, Microsoft’s no different. Your job is to:

Ensure your organization treats its employees the right way, because you may not be able to afford all the bad press
Leverage artificial intelligence as applicable and in the right way, implementing only the AI tools that make sense for your organization and collaborating only with AI providers that align not only with your value proposition but also with your core values

^{A screenshot from the beatoven.ai homepage, demonstrating how it works}

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A screenshot of the Apple Music (iTunes) user interface, showing that the song I generated using beatoven.ai had been added to my music library
^{A screenshot from Apple Music, showing the AI-generated song been added to my music library}

20 (More) AI Tools Your Team Can Start Using Now

AI is everywhere, and not all AI is created equal, so I will continue to provide new AI opportunities that have already been time tested and proven. In addition to my original top-15 list, try these:

Beatoven, brilliantly named, for creating custom royalty-free music
Cleanup, for removing unwanted objects, defects or text from images
Cleanvoice, for auto-editing podcasts
Copy, for generating copy designed specifically to increase conversions
CopyMonkey, for creating and optimizing Amazon listings in seconds
Flair, for designing branded content
Illustroke, for creating vector images from text
Inforall, for automated content creation “that puts safety first” (though I think they all say that)
Krisp, for removing background voices, noises and echo from your calls
Looka, for automated logo/brand design
Maverick, for generating personalized videos for customers
Ocoya, (a newer option) for creating and scheduling social media content
Otter, for writing and summarizing vocalized thoughts, which — Everywhere Accessible founder Tinu Abayomi-Paul has shown me — is great for organizations intent on including people with disabilities
Podcastle, for studio-quality recording from your desktop
Puzzle, for building a knowledge base for your team and/or customers
Stockimg, for producing AI-generated stock photos
STORYD, for creating OpenAI-powered data visualizations and presentations (“your leaders will love”) in seconds
Smart Copy, a ChatGPT competitor from Unbounce, a trusted name in lead generation
Vidyo, for making short-form videos from long-form content
VoicePen, for converting audio into written content