Google cofounder Sergey Brin frequently works at the company's HQ to help develop ChatGPT rival Gemini, report says

• Google cofounder Sergey Brin is back.
• Brin is frequently showing up at Google HQ to help its AI efforts, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Google cofounder Sergey Brin is reportedly showing up often at the search giant's headquarters to help develop ChatGPT rival Gemini and boost its AI ambitions.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Brin, who stepped down from an executive role at Google's parent company Alphabet in 2019, has become increasingly involved in the tech firm's AI strategy by working with researchers.

Some of the work has involved highly technical matters such as measuring the performance of AI, the publication said, citing people familiar with the matter. Brin has also been steering the hiring of researchers and organizing weekly meetings to discuss fresh AI research, it added.

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Brin and fellow cofounder Larry Page were first called on for support in December after Google CEO Sundar Pichai issued a "code red" in response to the launch of ChatGPT, The New York Times reported.

However, Brin's involvement in Google's AI efforts have significantly deepened since then. They also come at a critical time for the search giant, which has found itself scrambling to keep up in an increasingly competitive and populated contest to lead the field of AI.

Current and former Google employees told The Wall Street Journal that Brin's increased involvement is a reflection of his passion for AI, as well as Google's challenges in keeping pace with the rapid commercialization of AI by competitors.

Google is pouring efforts into Gemini, an AI model designed to rival the GPT-4 model underlying OpenAI's technology. The development of Gemini is being led by Google DeepMind boss Demis Hassabis. It adds to its chatbot Bard, which was launched as a counter to ChatGPT.

This week, Google's AI ambitions faced another threat as Meta unveiled Llama 2. This is a new version of its large language model, released in partnership with Microsoft with the aim of making generative AI freely available to developers and companies.

Meta and Microsoft said the model would be "open source," though licensees with more than 700 million monthly active users would need special permission from Meta to use the model, according to the terms and conditions.

Google did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment made outside of normal working hours.