In a somewhat risky move, Google CEO Eric Schmidt has thrown down the gauntlet to Microsoft, publicly inviting it to do battle in the artificial intelligence (AI) arena. Pichai’s response, “Any day, any time,” shows increasing rivalry between two technology corporations in the ongoing AI market competition.

The Challenge

The statement was made by Pichai during a tech forum as Google competes against ChatGPT by OpenAI, backed by Microsoft. Microsoft has embedded the OpenAI models for use in Bing and among Office tools, thus upping the pressure on Google to keep innovating.

Google, however, is no stranger to this kind of scenario. With the help of its AI model Bard, as well as DeepMind and Gemini AI, it has attempted to make new advancements in NLP and ML.

Why the Rivalry?

The rivalry stems from:

• Search Dominance: Microsoft's artificial intelligence-based Bing poses a major threat to Google’s dominance of the search market.
• Corporate AI Integrations: Both companies are now competing on just how AI can be integrated into apps for work, such as Google Workspace and Microsoft 365.
• Innovation Credibility: They both want to be at the forefront of both generating research and implementing artificial intelligence in modern society.

Industry Reactions

Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s statement elicited cheers in the AI camp, but others wonder if Google is ready to go to battle. The firm that has been coming out guns blazing with the promotion of AI in its domains is Microsoft, which has found itself with a much bigger battle on its hands, namely fending off an emboldened Google.

What’s Next?

Pichai’s challenge puts the leaders on edge for a potential public face-off, which can be in the form of AI markers, AI demonstrable use cases, or AI contests.

However, now it is only confined to the selling and changing of ideas, investments, and implementation. But in the end, the end consumer is the ultimate beneficiary, as idea generation, in this particular case, war, accelerates at an amazing speed.

Well, folks, apparently this AI showdown is only just getting started!