A top Google executive has said that the tech giant will not be looking at relying on outside companies to research and develop AI models. 

Kent Walker, President of Global Affairs at Google and Alphabet, said in a Semafor event on Thursday that Google "[doesn't] believe in outsourcing [R&D]" when it comes to making strides in AI. 

“We have something like 13,000 computer science PhDs at Google," said Walker, "who are excited about this and focused on this new generation of work."

The comments came right after the release of Google's Gemini AI - a big competitor for ChatGPT maker OpenAI which was into chaos following the fire and re-hire of Sam Altman last month. 

Google launches Gemini AI

After a year of living in OpenAI's shadow in the AI space, Google is finally ready to take a stand with the launch of Gemini – an AI model it says outperforms ChatGPT.

The AI model, which CEO Sundar Pichai says represents “the beginning of a new era of AI,” is Google’s newest and most capable large language model (LLM) yet. 

Google's recent relationship with AI has been an interesting one. Despite Google describing itself as "AI-first" for the last decade and being the creator of much of the foundational technology of the current AI boom, it was clearly caught off guard by how good ChatGPT was. Now, it seems, Google is ready to fight back.