After being on the backfoot throughout 2023 in the AI race, Alphabet Inc.'s (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) Google announced Gemini, its biggest salvo yet against OpenAI's ChatGPT. But TikTok parent ByteDance is already breathing down Google's neck.
What Happened: TikTok parent ByteDance is gearing up to launch a large language model (LLM) that it claims is more powerful than Google's Gemini.
"Uncertain about GPT-5, but a super-strong model (more powerful than Gemini) is expected to arrive anytime now," said Quanquan Gu, director of AI Research at ByteDance. Gu is also a professor at the University of California and leads the UCLA Artificial General Intelligence Lab.
Google's Gemini has impressed many in AI benchmarks - even Gu, and Elon Musk.
It is shown beating Microsoft Corp.-backed (NASDAQ: MSFT) OpenAI's GPT-4, but its win could be short-lived in the increasingly competitive AI race.
Buried in the Google Gemini report is a benchmark comparison of Ultra and Pro versions of the large language model with OpenAI's GPT-4 and GPT-3.5, apart from Meta Platforms Inc.'s (NASDAQ: META) Palm 2-L and Anthropic's Claude 2.
The version of Gemini that Google demonstrated in a pre-recorded video on Wednesday, Ultra, will arrive only in 2024.
"We'll make Gemini Ultra available to select customers, developers, partners, and safety and responsibility experts for early experimentation and feedback before rolling it out to developers and enterprise customers early next year," said Demis Hassabis, CEO and co-founder of Google DeepMind.
Note that Google doesn't say anything about Gemini Ultra's availability for end users even in 2024.
Google's Gemini model comes in three avatars - Ultra, Pro, and Nano. While Nano is rolling out to Pixel 8 Pro users in a preview version, Ultra and Pro are not available yet.
Short-lived Win? The AI arms race is heating up noticeably now. While Google's Gemini announcement should help lift the morale of Googlers which is reportedly at an all-time low, the company's CEO Sundar Pichai will want more rapid development from here on out.
ByteDance has been working on generative AI for a while now. Earlier in March, ByteDance showed off its AI-powered chatbots. Now Gu has confirmed that the launch of a large language model is imminent, suggesting that the company has made notable progress since then.