Google finally merged its two artificial intelligence (AI) teams, Brain and DeepMind, into a single group called Google DeepMind.
According to Neowin, Brain is the in-house AI team and part of the Google Research division of the company itself. DeepMind is a UK-based company that was founded in 2010 and acquired by Google in 2014
The merger of the two AI teams was announced by Google CEO Sundar Pichai in the latest announcement. Mr. Pichai thinks that combining talent from Brain and DeepMind into a focus group backed by the company’s computing resources will significantly accelerate Google’s progress in the field of AI.
It is known that the achievements that Google’s AI teams have previously achieved include prominent names such as AlphaGo, Transformers, word2vec, WaveNet, and AlphaFold or software frameworks such as TensorFlow and JAX for demonstration, training, and implement machine learning at scale.
DeepMind leader Demis Hassabis will assume the role of CEO of the consolidated company. Google’s former head of AI, Jeff Dean, will serve as Google’s chief scientist and report to Pichai
The announcement to merge Google’s AI teams comes as the company tries to catch up with Microsoft on AI innovations. In March, the company announced its AI chatbot called Bard, however the launch of the service was not as successful as expected and was met with controversy. A new report even claims that the company rushed to launch Bard in the face of objections from some employees, including many on the AI ethics team at the company. Besides that, Google is also working on its own AI art and video generators.