Google’s share price has surged by A$82 billion overnight after a single announcement that sent the stock market into overdrive.
The share price for Google’s parent company Alphabet has surged by A$82 billion overnight after a single announcement.
Alphabet unveiled a major update to its artificial intelligence (AI) platform to improve its Google search algorithm on Wednesday local time (Wednesday night/Thursday morning AEDT).
The news sent Alphabet’s stocks into overdrive, with investors rushing to get their hands on the shares. Increasing the company’s market value by billions and representing a five per cent leap overall.
Among the new features the tech giant is rolling out is ‘AI Snapshot’. Which integrates generative AI results above the search results of Google’s normal search algorithm.
The public’s reaction to Alphabet’s new ideas suite is markedly different to an announcement in February, at Google’s launch event for an AI tool called Bard.
At the time, the robot spat out inaccurate information in a company advertisement. Driving shares into meltdown with a nine per cent drop recorded. Which wiped an eye-watering $140 billion off the firm’s balance sheet.
Alphabet announced a number of other updates in the Wednesday press conference. Including a general-use large language model called PaLM 2 with more than 100 languages built in for everyday people to use.
On top of that, the big technology player has created an image search function which can flag AI. Generated images, a new AI feature on Google Maps and a new foldable phone.
Speaking of the newly announced changes, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said that the company was making a “bold” foray into a new area.
