Sundar Pichai Admits ChatGPT Temporarily Surpassed Google, Recalls “Code Red” Moment at Dreamforce

At Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai acknowledged the moment when OpenAI launched ChatGPT, admitting—rarely for him—that the technology briefly appeared to surpass Google’s own advancements, though he stressed it did not derail Google’s AI efforts. According to The New York Times, Google’s leadership issued a “code red” at the time, prompting Pichai to personally reassign multiple internal teams to accelerate AI development.

Looking back to late 2022, the emergence of ChatGPT backed by Microsoft posed a significant threat to Google’s dominance, with discussions at the time reflecting the competitive shock. Pichai also recalled how Google had already been developing its own conversational AI prototypes, which required additional months of refinement before a public release.

It was not until March 2023 that Google officially launched its AI chatbot, initially branded as Bard and later renamed Gemini, marking Google’s formal entry into the rapidly intensifying era of generative AI competition.