Google’s AI Blunder Shows Risks As It Tries To Catch Up With Microsoft

(CTN News) – For the second time in a row, Google (GOOG, GOOGL) was painfully reminded of the market buzz surrounding generative artificial intelligence.

In what critics have referred to as an anti-White bias, the search giant is planning to relaunch its Gemini AI image generator after users on social media showed inaccurate or unexpected results when prompts were given for historical images of people.

There was a viral post that appeared to show a Gemini result showing a portrait of a Founding Father of America that included a Black man and a  American Native man.

The results of other images and text generated disapproval from prominent figures, including X owner Elon Musk, who has previously criticized AI tools for their perceived liberal bias.

Despite Google’s efforts to position itself in the blossoming market for artificial intelligence (AI) products, the incident marks the latest misstep as it tries to keep up with Microsoft (MSFT) and OpenAI, its AI partnership partner.

Alphabet, Google’s parent company, saw its shares decline almost 5% this week following the announcement that the tool had been paused.

The CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, wrote in a memo on Tuesday,

“I know some of the responses have offended our users and displayed bias – I am absolutely certain that we erred in our assessment.

Loop Capital’s Rob Sanderson stated that the PR blunder suggests that Google is trailing and underperforming in the high-stakes field of generative AI and that questions surrounding its standing and search dominance will have an adverse effect on the company’s valuation.

He noted that seems to be handling product introduction differently than it did in the past. Our opinion is that Google is in an unfamiliar position by not being the leader in a core technology involving [machine learning].

Google is trying hard to catch up and now needs to go backward to repair a core technology component while dealing with a major PR blunder, or possibly something worse.”

A year ago, Google made its first AI mistake by releasing a demo of Bard, an AI chatbot, shortly after ChatGPT hit the scene. In a promotional video that was widely distributed online, chatbot provided an incorrect response to a question. Microsoft’s fortunes soared as skittish investors reduced Google’s market value by $100 billion.

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