The Google Gemini chatbot’s “woke” AI image generator still isn’t fixed more than a month after its disastrous rollout – and some critics claim it’s the latest sign that embattled CEO Sundar Pichai should be out of a job.
The search giant disabled Gemini’s ability to create pictures of humans in late February after it produced bizarre ahistorical photos such as Black Vikings and “diverse” Nazi-era German soldiers.
At the time, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said that the feature would be “back online very shortly in the next couple of weeks”.
As of Sunday, Google’s AI image generator was still offline, with users told that the company “expect(s) this feature to return soon.” Asked for a timetable on when it will be fully restored, a Google spokesman declined to comment.
It’s a rare, embarrassing retreat for the Silicon Valley juggernaut. In a potential sign of trouble for Pichai, Google’s reclusive co-founder Sergey Brin admitted the tech giant had “definitely messed up” and “upset a lot of people” in rare public remarks after the Gemini fiasco.
The 51-year-old Pichai — who also blasted the chatbot’s behavior as “completely unacceptable” in a memo to employees — has enjoyed remarkable freedom during his eight-and-a-half years as CEO. He enjoys close ties with Brin and fellow co-founder Larry Page, who retain voting control over every facet of the business.
Nevertheless, one former senior Google employee told The Post that Pichai’s job “should be at incredible risk” given the mistakes that have occurred on his watch.
“It’s all classic signs of a badly run company, except that Larry and Sergey control it like a family business,” said the ex-employee, who left Google last year. “Sundar can survive as CEO forever as long as Larry and Sergey don’t care enough to make a change.”
The heat is on Pichai as Google reportedly is looking to integrate paid AI features into its cash-cow search engine despite rampant skepticism about Gemini’s quality. Any further issues could derail talks with Apple to integrate Gemini into iPhones, while archrivals like Microsoft-backed OpenAI and Meta are pushing full steam ahead with their own plans.
A lukewarm assessment of Google’s AI performance has shown up in the company’s stock price. The stock’s 8% gain in the first quarter lagged behind that of the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq composite.
Google declined to comment.
Pichai’s critics include influential “Stratechery” blogger Ben Thompson, who argued Gemini chatbot’s “absurd” responses – which included a refusal to say whether Elon Musk or Hitler is worse – showed Pichai had allowed rogue employees to upset company culture and threaten Google’s business.
Thompson said Google’s current turmoil is reminiscent of Microsoft’s slump in the latter days of Steve Ballmer’s run as CEO, when the company clung to its struggling Windows platform. Microsoft later returned to growth only after a leadership change, when Satya Nadella refocused the company as a services provider.
“The point of the company ought not be to tell users what to think, but to help them make important decisions, as Page once promised,” Thompson wrote after the AI image disaster. “That means, first and foremost, excising the company of employees attracted to Google’s power and its potential to help them execute their political program, and return decision-making to those who actually want to make a good product.”
“That, by extension, must mean removing those who let the former run amok, up to and including CEO Sundar Pichai,” Thompson added.
More broadly, Google – which also fumbled the launch of its first chatbot “Bard” at a widely mocked demo event in Paris last year – has once again given fresh fodder to critics who believe the highly-paid Pichai may be the wrong person to oversee the AI race, where the company already shows signs of lagging behind Microsoft and OpenAI.
Critics point to other signs of discord within Google’s sprawling empire – including ongoing layoffs that have sparked an internal morale crisis, evasive answers on the company’s earnings calls and a lack of product innovation.
Bernstein analyst Mark Shmulik said Google’s most recent failure “only further raises increasingly louder questions around whether this is the right management team to guide Google into this next era.”
Shmulik expanded on his point in an email to The Post, noting that Google’s more pessimistic investors are watching closely for signs of weakness as the company scrambles to catch up in the AI race.
“If you believe we’re in war time, then the recent string of public missteps likely won’t fill you with confidence you can win this war,” Shmulik said.
During a recent episode of the popular “All In” tech podcast, co-host and former Google executive David Friedberg noted many investors were left “deeply frustrated and angry” due to fears the company is falling behind rivals on the AI front.
“Most of the investors I spoke with aren’t angry about the ‘woke’ DEI search engine,” Friedberg said earlier this month. “They’re angry about the fact that such a blunder happened and that it indicates that Google may not be able to compete effectively and isn’t organized to compete effectively in AI – just from a consumer competitiveness perspective.”
A native of Chennai, India, Pichai first joined Google in 2004. He became Google’s CEO in 2015 after Brin and Page restructured the company under the name Alphabet.
Under Pichai’s leadership, Google has enjoyed massive growth, with shares surging more than 300% since he took over the gig. The company’s recent results have been solid, with revenue and earnings growth accelerating in every quarter in 2023 and Google Cloud achieving profitability last year.
Still, detractors argue the sheer size of Google’s entrenched empire – which includes a more than 90% search of the online search market – has helped to insulate Pichai and other members of the company’s leadership team from criticism.
Despite its AI missteps and allegations that the quality of Google Search has plummeted due to spam, the company raked in more than $300 billion in revenue in fiscal 2023 alone.
“The reality is that Google gets away with mediocrity in a million under the radar ways because they are a monopoly and don’t face serious competition,” one tech policy insider who requested anonymity to discuss the matter. “This is a rare moment where that mediocrity happened to explode publicly.”
Other Google critics, such as Jeff Hauser, executive director at the Revolving Door Project, argue the enormous company has simply become too bloated for any individual to effectively manage — and should be broken up under antitrust law.
“The scope of just the political challenges that his company faces is immense and would require more than 40-hour work week to keep tabs on,” Hauer said. “I think it would probably be better if the person who is in charge of Gmail and search advertising wasn’t also the person overseeing generative AI.”
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