Google Says AI ‘Not A Race’ As Microsoft Launches Upgrades

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is having its major go-to-market phase shift moment.

The technology and its revolutionary capabilities have already spurred a profound change in how end-users access and activate information, as well as the way people more broadly use the internet and interact across data-rich environments, with millions using AI to boost their creativity and improve productivity.

And the companies bringing AI to market aren’t stopping now.

Microsoft, which is licensing AI technology, including the buzzy ChatGPT solution, from the unicorn startup OpenAI, announced Tuesday (May 23) the company will launch AI integrations across its full Windows 11 platform, including the firm’s most important software products.

Related: White House Calls Google, Microsoft CEOs To AI Meeting

The new AI integration into Windows 11, called Windows Copilot, will become available in June, announced company executives at the annual Microsoft Build conference, which ends this Thursday (May 25).

It makes Windows 11 the first PC platform to announce centralized AI assistance across its suite of both consumer and enterprise software products.

Meanwhile, across the Big Tech aisle, Alphabet and Google CEO and Charmain Sundar Pichai penned an Op-Ed in the Financial Times Tuesday, claiming that “building AI responsibly is the only race that really matters.”

“While some have tried to reduce this moment to just a competitive AI race, we see it as so much more than that,” Pichai wrote. “At Google, we’ve been bringing AI into our products and services for over a decade and making them available to our users. We care deeply about this. Yet, what matters even more is the race to build AI responsibly and make sure that as a society we get it right.”

Given how many enterprise operations, as well as day-to-day consumer touchpoints, have significant software components, generative AI will impact, at least in some manner, how businesses engage with their customers and how they compete with each other, particularly in marketplaces where speed to discovery can give a firm an edge.

Competitive race or not, Microsoft is certainly trying to narrow what industry observers believe may be a perceived gap around its capabilities relative to Alphabet’s Google.