SemiAnalysis, a semiconductor research company, reports that Google’s upcoming generative AI tool is currently five times more potent than the most advanced GPT-4 models on the market. Furthermore, they anticipate that by the conclusion of 2024, this AI tool could be as much as 20 times more powerful than ChatGPT.

After appearing to nod off at the wheel while the likes of OpenAI and Midjourney raced into an early lead with their AI tools, "the sleeping giant, Google, has woken up," the company said in a report at the end of August.

However, SemiAnalysis speculated that the Alphabet-owned internet search giant might not want to make its new Gemini model publicly available as it could lead to the "neutering of their creativity or existing business model."

The Center for AI Safety said that although OpenAI has been ahead of Google "for several years now," the release of ChatGPT meant Google "significantly increased their AI investments."

Pointing out Google’s "tremendous financial resources," which dwarf OpenAI’s, the center said, "it’s no surprise that Google can quickly ramp up spending to compete with other leading AI labs."

The spread since late 2022 of large language models (LLMs) and generative artificial intelligence has prompted warnings that the technology could threaten human life.

China has made moves to regulate its AI businesses, while the British government is to host an "AI safety summit" in November at Bletchley Park, the site of its World War II code-breaking operations.

In the meantime, the United States Senate is to host a series of meetings as part of a so-called AI Insight Forum. The first get-together is scheduled for Sept. 13 and, according to a report by Axios, will involve many of the industry’s leaders, including Google chief executive Sundar Pichai, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Elon Musk of X, previously known as Twitter.