Google Brings Former Head Of Character.AI Back As Co-Lead On Its Main AI Project

The tech giant spent billions to bring Noam Shazeer and a few key employees back to DeepMind, while also securing a licensing deal with Character.AI.

Prior to heading Character.AI, Shazeer was a long-time Google researcher.

Source : Unsplash/Pawel Czerwinski

Google has been attempting to make a solid position in the world of AI, however, it has been facing tough competition from other companies. In an attempt to do that faster, the tech giant has recently appointed Noam Shazeer, the former head of startup Character.AI to co-lead its main AI project. Prior to heading Character.AI, Shazeer was a long-time Google researcher, and now upon his return, he will serve as a technical lead on Gemini. Google, in a memo to its staff, said that Shazeer will be joining the other co-leaders, Jeff Dean and Oriol Vinyals.

Gemini refers to the series of AI models currently under development by DeepMind, Google's AI division, which are being incorporated into various products, including Search and Pixel smartphones.

Shazeer, who founded a chatbot company in 2021, has recently returned to Google. The tech giant spent billions to bring him and a few key employees back to DeepMind, while also securing a licensing deal with Character.AI.

Shazeer while replying to Google's memo via mail reportedly said, “We are thrilled to join the best team on earth building the most valuable technology on earth.”

Shazeer joined Google for the first time in 2000, just two years after its inception, and was a co-author of a seminal 2017 research paper which catalysed the current AI boom.

Did Google Acquire Character.AI?

The simple answer to this question is not yet.

Character.AI leverages the technical innovations introduced in the paper and has secured $193 million in funding, reaching a $1 billion valuation last year, according to venture capitalists. In November, Reuters reported that Google was considering investing hundreds of millions in Character.AI but ultimately chose to bring Shazeer back instead.

This deal is similar to actions taken by Amazon and Microsoft, who have also sought to recruit top talent from AI startups. These moves occur amid increasing regulatory scrutiny of big tech companies. Although not acquisitions, the other deals are under review by the Federal Trade Commission.

Recently, a US judge ruled that Google's search engine violated antitrust laws by spending billions to establish an illegal monopoly.