Card carrying member of the Tame Apple Press, The New York Times claims that  ChatGPT has caused Google to declare a “code red” internally, with fears that this technology could upend its search business.

Google fears that when people flock to chat programs in the future, they’re less likely to click or tap on those ads that Google is displaying in search. Even if Google came up with a competent competing chat bot, it would still have to figure out how to monetise it as well as search.

The Times points out that the company is experimenting with an intelligent chatbot of its own, called LaMDA which recently made the headlines when an ex-employee claimed it was sentient and needed to have its rights represented.  This has since been refuted by Google, but it still shows just how powerful these AI tools are at creating realistic conversations.

There is a certain about of "grain of salt" which needs to be taken with this story. The Times has an interest in rubbishing Google's advertising model which competes with its favourite fruity cargo cult. Google has contributed to ChatGPT and Dall-E 2  which is image creation software made by made by the same company -- OpenAI.  If Google was really scared about ChatGPT it probably would not have put so much effort and cash into OpenAI.