Behind the scenes: How AI is reshaping Google

Google already pushes out AI products at a breakneck pace, but it appears that’s still not fast enough for the company. To further speed up its AI development, the tech giant has decided to reshuffle some of its departments.

In a blog post, CEO of Google Sundar Pichai announced that the company will be streamlining its AI initiatives by moving around some of its parts. This first part of this change will include the Gemini app and Google DeepMind teams. Specifically, the Gemini app team is getting absorbed by DeepMind.

As for the reason why, Pichai states:

Bringing the teams closer together will improve feedback loops, enable fast deployment of our new models in the Gemini app, make our post-training work proceed more efficiently and build on our great product momentum.

The other big change involves the Assistant teams moving to Platforms and Devices. Going forward, these teams are now a single department. This move is said to have been made for the purpose of bringing its AI-powered home initiatives under one team and to focus on the customer experience.

In addition, it looks like Prabhakar Raghavan, SVP of search and ads, is changing roles to become Google’s chief technologist.

Prabhakar has decided it’s time to make a big leap in his own career. After 12 years leading teams across Google, he’ll return to his computer science roots and take on the role of Chief Technologist, Google. In this role, he’ll partner closely with me and Google leads to provide technical direction and leadership and grow our culture of tech excellence.

Meanwhile, Nick Fox, who was a part of Raghavan’s leadership team, will be taking over Raghavan’s old position. Fox will now be in charge of Search, Ads, Geo, and Commerce products.