Pichai said that the company has been making AI systems and tools from ground up as well as refining products While acknowledging the tough competition. The debate stems from comments by Altman regarding competition between the two tech powerhouses, where the OpenAI leader argued that his company builds AI-native applications while implying that Google simply “bolts” machine learning capabilities onto its existing software suite. Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai has pushed back against claims made by OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman , rejecting the notion that Google is merely retrofitting artificial intelligence (AI) into legacy products rather than developing authentic, AI-first systems.
Pichai challenged the idea that Google lacks ground-up AI platforms, citing the direct development of the standalone Gemini app as evidence of ground-up product design. He then turned the exact same design critique back toward OpenAI, questioning how ChatGPT itself handles the rapid evolution toward autonomous software agents.