Google CEO tells employees some of company’s top products ‘were not first to market’ as A.I. pressure mounts

Google CEO Sundar Pichai advised staff on Wednesday to take just a few hours in the course of the week to check the corporate’s synthetic intelligence chat device Bard as he faces criticism for management’s sluggish response to ChatGPT and rival Microsoft.

“I know this moment is uncomfortably exciting, and that’s to be expected: the underlying technology is evolving rapidly with so much potential,” Pichai wrote in a companywide e mail, which was seen by CNBC.

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Pichai requested staff to spend two to 4 hours of their time on Bard, including that subsequent week the corporate will ship extra detailed directions. He reminded staffers that Google has not at all times been the primary to launch a product, however that hasn’t hampered its capability to win.

“Some of our most successful products were not first to market,” Pichai wrote. “They gained momentum because they solved important user needs and were built on deep technical insights.”

Numerous search engines existed before Google hit the market in 1996, and yet they almost all vanished as Google came to dominate the industry. In mobile, Google didn’t introduce Android until years after the BlackBerry existed, and it also followed companies like Palm. Now, Android is the most popular mobile operating system in the world.

Still, Google parent Alphabet was slammed by investors last week after the company was upstaged by Microsoft’s announcement of a ChatGPT-integrated Bing search engine. Google unveiled its conversation technology Bard, but a series of missteps around the rushed announcement pushed the stock price down nearly 9%.

At the time, Pichai issued a rallying cry, asking for “each Googler to assist form Bard and contribute via a particular company-wide dogfood,” referring to the practice of using its own product before launching it. Employees criticized Pichai for the mishaps, describing the rollout internally as “rushed,” “botched” and “comically short sighted.” 

Pichai’s newest e mail to staff went on to say that “this will be a long journey for everyone, across the field.”

“The most important thing we can do right now is to focus on building a great product and developing it responsibly,” he wrote.

In December, shortly after OpenAI released ChatGPT to the public, Google executives warned that they had to be deliberate in introducing AI search tools because the company has much more “reputational risk” and is moving “more conservatively than a small startup.”

Pichai said on Wednesday that the company has thousands of external and internal people testing Bard’s responses “for quality, safety, and groundedness in real-world information.”

“AI has gone through many winters and springs,” Pichai wrote. “And now it is blooming again.” He said it’s time to “embrace the challenge and keep iterating.”

“Channel the vitality and pleasure of the second into our merchandise,” Pichai wrote. “Pressure test Bard and make the product better.”

WATCH: CNBC’s full interview with Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai