Google CEO, Sundar Pichai has asked employees to spend 2 to 4 hours on improving Bard, Google’s recently-released AI chatbot, reported Business Insider (BI) citing a leaked company-wide email. Bard is the company’s AI chatbot that Google intends to integrate into search.

The email indicates urgency in Google’s approach in order to win the next generation of AI-based search. Google has been pushed to the sidelines as Microsoft has garnered attention for its investment in OpenAI. Notably, OpenAI created ChatGPT, which has gained popularity in recent months. ChatGPT, the chatbot, was released in 2022.

It can respond to broad, open-ended questions with human-like answers, the report said.

Last week, Microsoft released a revamped version of its Bing search engine powered by ChatGPT. CEO, Microsoft, Satya Nadella called it a “new day” for search.

Addressing Googlers in his memo, Pichai wrote, “I know this moment is uncomfortably exciting, and that’s to be expected: the underlying technology is evolving rapidly with so much potential”.

He added, “The most important thing we can do right now is to focus on building a great product and developing it responsibly,” as quoted by BI.

The report added that last week, when Bard provided an incorrect response to a question about the James Webb Space Telescope, Google suffered reputational damage. In addition to that, the stocks of the company declined more than 9 per cent as the news of the mistake gained traction.

Earlier, Google saw internal turmoil over its AI-based initiatives, as some employees feared the technology was not ready and could cause harm, like the spread of bias or misinformation. At the same time, data and user feedback are an advantage for Google as they help Google further improve responses in its AI systems, the report said.

“AI has gone through many winters and springs,” Pichai concluded. “And now it’s blooming again. As an AI-first company, we’ve been working towards this for many years and are ready for it,” Pichai said, as per the report.