Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai has pushed back against claims made by OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, rejecting the notion that Google is merely retrofitting artificial intelligence (AI) into legacy products rather than developing authentic, AI-first systems.
While acknowledging the tough competition, Pichai said that the company has been making AI systems and tools from ground up as well as refining products.
The debate stems from comments by Altman regarding competition between the two tech powerhouses, where the OpenAI leader argued that his company builds AI-native applications while implying that Google simply “bolts” machine learning capabilities onto its existing software suite.“First of all, it’s a very dynamic moment. We are all pushing each other. OpenAI has pushed us as a company too. This is not just we are doing something to them. Far from it,” Pichai offered a candid response, emphasising that the intense technological race is driving innovation across the board.“In the AI moment, all of us have to respond with varying levels of urgency at any given moment in time,” he added.
Flipping the ‘Bolt-On’ question back to OpenAI
Pichai challenged the idea that Google lacks ground-up AI platforms, citing the direct development of the standalone Gemini app as evidence of ground-up product design.
He then turned the exact same design critique back toward OpenAI, questioning how ChatGPT itself handles the rapid evolution toward autonomous software agents.“We are constantly building new products as well. Gemini was built from the ground up as a product—the Gemini app I’m talking about,” Pichai noted, asking, “Or tomorrow, as all of us are adapting to agents, are you bolting agents onto ChatGPT, or are they building it natively? How would you think about that? You can always flip these questions back.”
Pichai implies ‘winning means both adapting and building new’
Rather than getting trapped in industry labels over what qualifies as “native” versus “integrated,” Pichai explained that successfully navigating the generative AI shift requires deploying both strategies simultaneously. The ultimate goal, he argued, is to deliver standout user experiences that perform and win in the real world.“I don’t think of it that way. I think of it as you want to build world-class product experiences that are AI-native and they are winning. Some of it is adapting products, some of it is rethinking new experiences. They will all be part of how you approach this moment,” Pichai explained.