Character.AI: Former Google engineer returns to company with AI collaboration

The founder of one of the hottest AI startups, Character.AI, rejoins Google and other team members.

Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, along with some members of the Character.AI research team, will join Google’s artificial intelligence unit DeepMind, the companies said on Friday.

Character.AI uses large language models to allow users to create chatbots and interact with other user-created chatbots. Valuation: $1 billion As the AI ​​boom took off last year, Character.AI had yet to generate revenue but said it was considering offering a subscription service in the future.

The two founders left Google in 2021 after the search giant It is said that They rejected their attempt to have Google promote the development of chatbots. In the same year, they founded Character.AI.

Freitas has criticized Google for moving too slowly, telling Axios last March that “while there is some overlap, we believe Google will never do anything interesting,” referring to Bard (now the Gemini chatbot).

Character.AI will provide Google with a non-exclusive license to its current Large Language Model (LLM) technology, which is the company’s Blog Posts states. “The agreement will Character.AI Continue to grow and focus on creating personalized AI products for users around the world,” it said.

“However, over the past two years, the landscape has changed — there are now many more pre-trained models available,” the blog post continued. “Given these changes, we believe there is an advantage to making greater use of third-party LLMs in addition to our own. This allows us to invest more resources in post-training and create new product experiences for our growing user base.”

Alphabet has come under fire for being beaten to the punch in the AI ​​chatbot craze by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, so it has enacted Variety enabling their organizations to get to market faster. Late last year, Google It is said that It is in talks to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in Character.AI.

“I’m very excited to be returning to Google and becoming a part of the Google DeepMind team,” Chazelle said in a statement on Friday. “I’m proud of everything we’ve accomplished at Character.AI over the past three years. I’m confident that the funding from the non-exclusive Google license agreement combined with the amazing Character.AI team will position Character.AI for continued success in the future.”

“We are very pleased to welcome back Noam, a distinguished researcher in the field of machine learning, who will join the research team at Google DeepMind along with a small number of his colleagues,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement to CNBC.

The move also comes at a time when competition for talent and artificial intelligence is intensifying, leading companies to forge partnerships amid a strict regulatory environment that has put mergers under heavy scrutiny. For example, Britain’s competition regulator said earlier this week it was investigating Google’s partnership with artificial intelligence startup Anthropic.

March, Microsoft Hire Mustafa SuleimanHe was the co-founder of DeepMind, an artificial intelligence startup acquired by Google in 2014, and led most of the company’s employees to lead artificial intelligence initiatives. Sulaiman became Microsoft’s executive vice president and CEO of artificial intelligence, reporting to CEO Satya Nadella. Last month, British regulators launched Combined investigation About the hiring of Microsoft employees.