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- Google hinted that its cofounder Sergey Brin played a key role in the tech giant's AI push.
- Brin is listed as a "core contributor" to Gemini, the company's latest AI model.
- Google reportedly turned to Brin and Larry Page for help as it scrambled to respond to ChatGPT.
Sergey Brin is back at Google as it appears he played a key role in building the company's GPT-4 rival.
The Google cofounder, who along with Larry Page stepped back from the company in 2019, is listed as a "core contributor" to the company's latest AI model, Gemini, in the white paper outlining its capabilities.
It confirms reports that Brin has been playing a much more active role at the company as it scrambles to catch up with its AI rivals.
In January, the New York Times reported that Google CEO Sundar Pichai had turned to Page and Brin for help after being caught off guard by the success of OpenAI's ChatGPT.
Since then, Brin has reportedly been seen frequently working at Google's California headquarters and has been directly involved in developing the company's AI strategy, making his first request to access Google's code in years in January.
The tech giant has largely abandoned its previously cautious approach to rolling out new AI products and has released a host of new AI features and tools — including Gemini, which was unveiled on Wednesday. Google said the most capable version of this model, which won't be available until next year, can outperform OpenAI's GPT-4 on measures such as multiple-choice questions and grade school math.
Page and Brin retained roles on the board of Google's parent company Alphabet after stepping down as CEO and President, but were mostly hands-off when it came to the day-to-day running of Google, only checking in occasionally on the company's futuristic "moonshot" projects.
They have largely retreated from the public eye, occupying themselves by buying private islands and attending parties at Burning Man.
However, as with so much else in the tech world, the arrival of the AI arms race changed that.
Brin told the audience at a Silicon Valley hackathon in August that he was "pretty much retired" at the time of the Covid pandemic, but the lure of being a part of the brave new world of AI was impossible to resist.
"This AI revolution is just incredible. I've never experienced a time in technology and computer science as revolutionary as this, and I didn't want to miss out," he said, in comments reported by the Verge.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.