Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet, parent company of Google, stands onstage in front of a packed house at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, Calif. He’s doing his best interpretation of a role pioneered by Steve Jobs and Bill Gates: the tech CEO as part pop idol, part tent-revival preacher, deliverer of divine revelation, not in song or sermon but in software and silicon. Except the soft-spoken, introverted Pichai is not a natural for the role: Somehow his vibe is more high school musical than Hollywood Bowl.
Pichai declared Google to be an “A.I.-first” company way back in 2016. Now A.I. is having a major moment—but a Google rival is grabbing all the attention. The November debut of ChatGPT caught Google off guard, setting off a frantic six months in which it scrambled to match the generative A.I. offerings being rolled out by ChatGPT creator OpenAI and its partner and backer, Microsoft.
