Ex-Google engineer said his former employer isn't taking AI seriously after demoing its new tools in Paris

• Maarten Bosma, an ex-Google Brain engineer, said in a tweet that Alphabet isn't taking AI seriously.
• Bosma's tweet comes after Google demoed its latest AI tools in Paris, including ChatGPT rival Bard.

Earlier this week, Google demoed its new AI tools to the public for the first time, but some AI professionals weren't impressed.

Maarten Bosma, a former research engineer at Google Brain, Alphabet's AI division, replied to a tweet thread discussing his former employer's presentation with his thoughts on what it signals for company's AI journey.

"I think the Google presentation signaled (rightfully or wrongly) that they are not really taking it seriously," Bosma tweeted.

He pointed to the fact that Google's demo of Bard, its rival to ChatGPT "was less than 5 minutes" and was presented along with other new tools, such as an updated Google Maps and Google Lens.

He also noted that the conference "was in Paris instead of HQ" and that the "CEO wasn't there." While Google didn't immediately roll out its AI chatbot, "Bing, on the other hand, changed the homepage" to include it, he added.

Bosma, who left Google in April 2022 after six years, per his LinkedIn, did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment before publication. Nor did Google.

Bosma's tweet comes as the AI wars in Big Tech have started to heat up, with companies like Alphabet and Microsoft working to develop powerful conversational chatbots.

Microsoft, which has partnered with ChatGPT's creator OpenAI, announced its latest AI-powered search engine — the "new Bing" — in a surprise press conference Tuesday, just a day after Google broke the news that it is developing its own AI chatbot called Bard. The chatbot will be used to enhance its Google Search engine after the company issued a "code red."

Bosma isn't the only one to critique Google's approach to AI.

"The event was, frankly, bad," analyst Ben Thompson wrote about Google's presentation in a blog post, adding that the "vast majority" of what was presented "was a rehash" of what was shown at past Google events.

Viewers of the presentation were also quick to notice that Google's ad for Bard contained an error in which the experimental chatbot incorrectly answered a question about the James Webb Space Telescope.

But some were puzzled about the immediate backlash against Google

Gary Marcus, a former professor of neural science at New York University and a self-proclaimed AI skeptic, pointed out in a Substack post that even though Microsoft and Google's AI tools are both at similar stages of deployment and contain flaws, "they are being treated as polar opposites."

Microsoft' demo "was presented as a revolution," while Google's demo was presented as a "disaster," Marcus wrote.

The company has said that Bard will be released to the public in a few weeks after more tests are done.

That's when the real battle will begin.