Alphabet is merging Google Brain & DeepMind groups into one A.I. effort

Published , by Bill Lavoy

Alphabet is merging its Google Brain research division with DeepMind as the company attempts to keep pace in the AI space. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai revealed the move in a blog post on Thursday that also sees Google’s head of AI, Jeff Dean, promoted to chief scientist.

Brain and DeepMind will be merged into Google DeepMind, focusing all of Alphabet’s AI initiatives into one team. CEO Sundar Pichai had this to say about the merger in a blog post:

Pichai went on to say that combining the work of these two teams will accelerate their progress in AI, something that appears necessary with the explosion in popularity of OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT. Google rolled out its own chatbot called Bard earlier in 2023, but that was a rocky introduction to say the least, and many within Google blamed Sundar Pichai.

It’s tough to say if today’s news will be enough to help Google close the gap on ChatGPT, but it’s clear that AI will be a major focus of many companies moving forward. We’re still in the very early days of this AI push, and there’s bound to be a lot more news before things calm down. You can keep up with the latest on both ChatGPT and Bard by sticking right here with Shacknews.