- On Monday, OpenAI is holding an event that could see an announcement about a new multimodal digital assistant.
- Being multimodal would allow the assistant to use images for prompts, such as identifying and translating a sign in the real world.
- This would be a direct threat against Google’s digital assistants, namely Google Assistant and the newer Gemini.
Over the past few weeks, the rumor mill has been churning, suggesting that OpenAI — the company responsible for ChatGPT — could soon launch an AI-powered search engine, which would be a direct threat to Google’s core business. Given how prominent ChatGPT has become in such a short time, this would represent the first real threat to Google Search in decades.
However, it’s looking less likely that OpenAI has a search engine on the way (via The Information). Instead, new rumors suggest that OpenAI’s scheduled event on Monday could see the company announcing a multimodal digital assistant. While not a traditional search engine, it would still allow people to search for things using the power of AI, so it would still be a significant threat to Google.