Google如何開始贏得人工智能競賽（1/2）

Recently The New York Times reported the following:

How Google Is Starting to Win the A.I. Race (1/2)

Despite its early stumbles, Google’s Gemini has leapfrogged ChatGPT in relevance and usefulness. Soon, it will be ubiquitous.

TECH FIX - By Brian X. Chen - Brian X. Chen is The New York Times’s lead consumer technology writer and the author of Tech Fix, a column about the social implications of the tech we use.

May 19, 2026

Just two years ago, Google looked like it was in trouble. In a desperate move to play catch-up with the OpenAI chatbot that had upended the tech industry, the search giant debuted an unpolished version of its artificial intelligence on Google.com. The A.I. spat out shoddy information, including advice for people to eat rocks and put glue on their pizza.

Google’s reign over the internet seemed at risk.

But today, consensus is forming in Silicon Valley not only that Google has recovered and caught up but that it could actually win the A.I. race, a testament to how so much can change in so little time.

Google announced on Tuesday at Google I/O, its conference for software developers, that in only one year the number of people regularly using its chatbot, Gemini, had more than doubled to 900 million, on a par with OpenAI’s self-reported number of active users for ChatGPT and nearly 30 times the estimated web traffic of Anthropic’s Claude chatbot, which is more focused on business customers.

And unlike Anthropic and OpenAI, which are still losing money from operating expensive A.I. data centers, Google is rapidly developing ways to use A.I. to increase profit with online advertising, its bread and butter. In its last quarter, Google reported, its advertising revenue rose 16 percent to $77 billion, fueled by A.I. technology that has helped marketers collect deeper information about users’ interests.

Pretty soon, Gemini will become a staple on a competitor’s platform: Apple’s iPhone. Google and Apple said in January that Gemini would become the foundational A.I. technology for a future version of Siri, Apple’s voice assistant. Gemini is already included on Android devices, so the partnership with Apple will, in effect, bake Gemini into virtually all of the world’s phones.

At I/O this week, Google shared its vision for how it would use A.I. to increase sales for online retailers, including through a new type of shopping cart that automatically surfaces promotions to shoppers.

The company also said it was continuing to add its A.I. into tools that people use every day — for instance, by letting a person using Google Docs ask Gemini to draft a speech that includes personal anecdotes and jokes.

“If I had to put a wager on the biggest winner of A.I., I would say it’s Google,” said Gary Rivlin, a former New York Times reporter who wrote a book about the tech industry’s race to cash in on A.I.

“If you asked me that same question a year and a half ago, the answer wouldn’t have been Google,” he added.

(to be continued)

Translation

Google如何開始贏得人工智能競賽（1/2）

儘管早期遭遇了一些挫折，Google的Gemini在相關性和實用性方面已經超越了ChatGPT。很快，它將無所不在

僅僅兩年前，谷歌似乎陷入了困境。為了追趕顛覆科技產業的OpenAI聊天機器人，這家搜尋巨頭孤注一擲地在Google.com上推出了一個未經完善的人工智能版本。這個人工智能輸出的資訊品質低劣，包括建議人們吃石頭和在披薩上塗膠水。

谷歌在網路上的主導地位似乎岌岌可危。

但如今，矽谷普遍認為，Google不僅已經復甦並迎頭趕上，甚至有可能贏得人工智能競賽，這充分證明了瞬息萬變的局面。

谷歌週二在Google I/O, 即軟件開發者大會上宣佈，其聊天機器人 Gemini 的活躍用戶數量在短短一年內翻了一番多，達到 9 億，與 OpenAI 自報的 ChatGPT 活躍用戶數量持平，幾乎是 Anthropic 公司面向企業客戶的聊天機器人 Claude 的 30 倍。

Google與仍在因經營昂貴的人工智能數據中心而虧損的 Anthropic 和 OpenAI 不同，它正在迅速開發利用人工智能提升線上廣告利潤的方法，而線上廣告正是其賴以生存的核心業務。谷歌報告稱，在上一季度，其廣告收入成長了 16%，達到 770 億美元，這主要得益於人工智能技術，該技術幫助行銷人員更深入地收集關於用戶的興趣。

不久之後，Gemini 將成為競爭對手平台－蘋果 iPhone 的標配。谷歌和蘋果在今年 1 月宣佈，Gemini 將成為未來 Siri（蘋果語音助手）版本的人工智能技術的基礎。 Gemini 目前已內建於Android 裝置中，因此與蘋果的合作實際上將使 Gemini 應用到全球幾乎所有手機中。

在本週的 I/O 大會上，Google分享了其利用人工智能提升線上零售商銷售額的願景，其中包括一種新型購物車，可以自動向購物者推送促銷訊息。

該公司還表示，將繼續把人工智能融入人們日常使用的工具中 - 例如，讓用戶在使用 Google Docs 時，讓 Gemini 起草一份包含個人軼事和笑話的演講稿。

曾撰寫過一本關於科技業競相從人工智能中獲利的書的前《紐約時報》記者Gary Rivlin說道:「如果非要我押注人工智能領域最大的贏家是誰，我會說是谷歌」。

他補充道:「如果你一年半前問我同樣的問題，我的答案肯定不是谷歌」。

（待續）