The New York Times reported that the rapid uptake of ChatGPT had prompted Sundar Pichai to declare a company-wide "code red" and to join a series of meetings to set Google's AI strategy, with ChatGPT seen as an existential threat to search. According to the reporting, co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin — long absent from day-to-day work — rejoined product meetings, plans to add conversational features to search were pulled forward, and internal material was prepared covering more than 20 planned AI products and a demo of a chatbot-driven version of search. Google had invented the Transformer and had LaMDA in hand yet held back from shipping; an outside product forced its hand. The Bard announcement in February, the Google DeepMind merger in April, and Gemini in December all followed from this.
21December 2022
Google reported to declare a "code red" over ChatGPT
The "code red" and the substance of the internal meetings were reported by The New York Times based on internal documents and people familiar with the matter; Google never confirmed it officially. The company's subsequent actions — the hurried Bard launch, the reorganization — were consistent with the reporting, and it was treated as established at the time.