Alphabet debuts beefed-up AI search and chatbot as competition heats up

Google parent Alphabet on Tuesday showed how it is building on artificial intelligence across its businesses, including a beefed-up Gemini chatbot and improvements to its prized search engine as it races to compete with AI rivals.

The flurry of announcements underscores Google’s efforts to refresh its products since Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s 2022 launch of ChatGPT dazzled the public, threatening the incumbent’s long reign over online search and AI.

Among Google’s latest salvos was an addition to its family of Gemini 1.5 AI models known as Flash that is faster and cheaper to run; a prototype called Project Astra, which can talk to users about anything captured on their smartphone camera in real time; and search results categorized under AI-generated headlines.