Microsoft and Google are angling to capture the AI market, with both companies backing chat tools recently: Microsoft through its ChatGPT investments and Google with its new Bard feature. The companies also made back-to-back announcements last week about plans to use AI-powered technology to boost their respective search engines. 

This year marks what Microsoft President Brad Smith has called an inflection point for AI, comparing it to 2007 for the smartphone or 1995 for the web — the years the new technologies exploded in popularity with the public.

Long operating in the shadow of the dominant search engine Google, Bing may see a boost from the new feature. Bing reached 31.7 million visits the day after Microsoft’s announcement last week, which is 15 percent higher than Bing’s average daily volume for the past six months, according to data estimated by SimilarWeb. 

As the tech companies plow forward, regulators seem to be at the starting line of laying the groundwork of guardrails. 

“Right now in the US there’s sort of a lot of things going on, but it’s very early. I think regulators and policymakers don’t have a good understanding of how some of these technologies work,” Rayid Ghani, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, told The Hill. 

That speed is not without concern. Experts said the arms race could lead companies to release tools before they may be ready.  The clearest example of that risk is generative AI tools giving false information in results, or what the industry is dubbing “hallucinating.” 

Even during Google’s demonstration of Bard last week, the tool gave the wrong response about discoveries made by the James Webb Space Telescope. 

Key companies are also in talks with lawmakers and are urging D.C. against adding guardrails that would make them slow down. You can read more about those concerns in the full report at digital-stage.thehill.com.