Gemini pressure forces ChatGBT to postpone key new features for growth
Artificial intelligence company OpenAI has decided to postpone the rollout of planned new features for its ChatGBT chatbot in order to focus on improving its quality.
These postponed features and services include advertising, AI agents for shopping and other tasks, and a digital personal assistant called Pulse, according to an internal OpenAI memo reported by The Wall Street Journal and The Information.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told employees in the memo that the company needs to do more to improve the quality of its core product, ChatGBT, specifically in terms of personalization, speed, reliability, and enabling the chatbot to answer more questions.
To focus on these goals, Altman reportedly stated in the memo that OpenAI is postponing the additional features planned for ChatGBT.
OpenAI is facing pressure from competitors, particularly Google, whose latest Gemini models outperform ChatGBT in industry benchmark tests, according to a report by Android Authority, a technology news site, reviewed by Al Arabiya Business.
Although OpenAI reported that ChatGBT had around 700 million weekly active users in September, Gemini is rapidly closing the gap. Google stated that Gemini's monthly active users jumped from 450 million in July to 650 million in October.
Furthermore, OpenAI is also facing challenges on several fronts from Anthropic, the developer of the Cloud chatbot, which is gaining traction in the enterprise sector.
OpenAI's move to slow down its growth initiatives in favor of delivering a core, efficient product is an unusual and practical development in the field of artificial intelligence. The company is committed to investing hundreds of billions of dollars in data centers over the coming years, despite failing to turn a profit so far.
The current AI sector relies largely, in theory, on a small number of companies investing and lending to each other in what are known as "circular deals," which makes future profitability forecasts uncertain.
The precarious financial position of OpenAI's large-scale AI operations puts it at a disadvantage compared to Google, which can support its AI ambitions, at least in part, by using revenue from other ventures such as cloud services and online advertising.
It is said that Anthropic, a competitor, is on track to become profitable before OpenAI, with the company expecting to break even for the first time in 2028. On the other hand, OpenAI expects to lose $74 billion in 2028. According to the ChatGPT developer's projections, OpenAI could become profitable starting in 2030 if it manages to increase its annual revenue by approximately $200 billion.