An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Last month, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google's founders, held several meetings with company executives. The topic: a rival's new chatbot, a clever A.I. product that looked as if it could be the first notable threat in decades to Google's $149 billion search business. Mr. Page and Mr. Brin, who had not spent much time at Google since they left their daily roles with the company in 2019, reviewed Google's artificial intelligence product strategy, according to two people with knowledge of the meetings who were not allowed to discuss them. They approved plans and pitched ideas to put more chatbot features into Google's search engine. And they offered advice to company leaders, who have put A.I. front and center in their plans. The re-engagement of Google's founders, at the invitation of the company's current chief executive, Sundar Pichai, emphasized the urgency felt among many Google executives about artificial intelligence and that chatbot, ChatGPT. The bot, which was released by the small San Francisco company OpenAI two months ago, amazed users by simply explaining complex concepts and generating ideas from scratch. More important to Google, it looked as if it could offer a new way to search for information on the internet. The new A.I. technology has shaken Google out of its routine. Mr. Pichai declared a "code red," upending existing plans and jump-starting A.I. development. Google now intends to unveil more than 20 new products and demonstrate a version of its search engine with chatbot features this year, according to a slide presentation reviewed by The New York Times and two people with knowledge of the plans who were not authorized to discuss them. "This is a moment of significant vulnerability for Google," said D. Sivakumar, a former Google research director who helped found a start-up called Tonita, which makes search technology for e-commerce companies. "ChatGPT has put a stake in the ground, saying, 'Here's what a compelling new search experience could look like.'" Further reading: Google Axes 12,000 Jobs

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CNET will pause publication of stories generated using artificial intelligence "for now," the site's leadership told employees on a staff call Friday. The Verge reports: The call, which lasted under an hour, was held a week after CNET came under fire for its use of AI tools on stories and one day after The Verge reported that AI tools had been in use for months, with little transparency to readers or staff. CNET hadn't formally announced the use of AI until readers noticed a small disclosure. "We didn't do it in secret," CNET editor-in-chief Connie Guglielmo told the group. "We did it quietly." CNET, owned by private equity firm Red Ventures, is among several websites that have been publishing articles written using AI. Other sites like Bankrate and CreditCards.com would also pause AI stories, executives on the call said. The call was hosted by Guglielmo, Lindsey Turrentine, CNET's EVP of content and audience, and Lance Davis, Red Ventures' vice president of content. They answered a handful of questions submitted by staff ahead of time in the AMA-style call. Davis, who was listed as the point of contact for CNET's AI stories until recently, also gave staff a more detailed rundown of the tool that has been utilized for the robot-written articles. Until now, most staff had very little insight into the machine that was generating dozens of stories appearing on CNET. The AI, which is as of yet unnamed, is a proprietary tool built by Red Ventures, according to Davis. AI editors are able to choose domains and domain-level sections from which to pull data from and generate stories; editors can also use a combination of AI-generated text and their own writing or reporting. Turrentine declined to answer staff questions about the dataset used to train AI in today's meeting as well as around plagiarism concerns but said more information would be available next week and that some staff would get a preview of the tool.

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