Are Chatbots the End of Apple and Meta?

Chatbot technology has been around for a while now, but it has become a buzzword in the tech world ever since the release of ChatGPT. It is the only platform that has reached 100 million users in just two months of launch, while it took TikTok nine months, Instagram two and half years, and Facebook and Google five years to reach 100 million users.

With the growing popularity of ChatGPT, Google and Microsoft are investing heavily in AI chatbot technology. So, if ChatGPT has seen a massive positive response and Google and Microsoft spending heavily on it, then doesn’t it doubt the dominance of Apple and Meta/Facebook? Let’s discuss this point in depth in this article and come up with some realistic conclusions.

Investments of Google and Microsoft in Chatbots

Google and Microsoft have been in the news for the past few weeks over their race for AI-powered search engines. With the launch of ChatGPT, Google realized its potential impact and issued a “Code Red” for it. ChatGPT provides the answer of the query directly instead of showing ads and a bunch of websites to explore, as in the case of Google. Seeing the chance to dominate Bing over Google, Microsoft responded fast through its billion-dollar collaboration with OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT.

Microsoft has made a whopping $10 billion multi-year investment partnership with OpenAI. However, it is not the first investment of Microsoft in OpenAI. It made a $1 billion investment back in 2019 and another silent $2 billion investment, as reported by industry sources. With these investments, Microsoft intends to integrate the Bing interface with ChatGPT. In addition, the tech giant also plans to integrate ChatGPT into Office products. Besides that, since OpenAI uses Azure to train all its models, Microsoft intends to provide its Azure users with Azure OpenAI cloud to help them create state-of-the-art applications using next-generation AI.

Just like Microsoft, Google is also going deep with its AI chatbot investment. In response to Microsoft’s $10 billion investment, Google announced “Bard“, its ChatGPT alternative. However, Bard has turned out to be disaster for Google till now. The inaccurate answer during the demo of the Bard left Alphabet, Google’s parent company, to lose 7% on Wednesday and 4% on Thursday, making a drop of around $160 billion in stock value. Despite the loss, the game is not over for Google. The tech giant is committed to enforcing the AI chatbot into its search experience and giving Microsoft and other competitors tough competition.

Can Chatbots Break the Influence of Apple and Meta/Facebook?

Google and Microsoft are dominating the race of AI chatbots, while the growing use of ChatGPT is questioning the market influence of Apple and Meta. However, it is not likely that chatbots will diminish the power of Apple and Meta. One of the dominant reasons is that Apple and Meta offer unique services, differentiating them from the chatbot competition. In addition, below are the key reasons that further clear whether Apple and Meta/Facebook are in danger with the emergence of chatbots:

Business Nature

The business nature of Apple and Meta is different from Google and Microsoft. Apple delivers top-notch electronic products, while Meta provides social interaction. However, chatbots are meant to facilitate searches and queries. So, the Apple and Meta business model is not replaceable by chatbots.

Even if chatbots become popular and ChatGPT or Bard grabs billions of users, they will be used along with products/services of Apple and Meta. Google search engine is an excellent example here. Apple users actively use Google to do searches. Similarly, the search responses of Google provide a way for users to access Meta services, such as links of celebrities’ Instagram accounts, etc. Therefore, the emerging technology of chatbots does not seem to compromise the use of Apple and Meta.

Brand Loyalty

Both Apple and Meta have a massive loyal user base. Moreover, both brands hold a reputation for innovation. Users expect new innovative products/services from them regularly, which has helped them to build a massive loyal following.

Brand loyalty will help Apple and Meta if they face competition from chatbots. Moreover, they can also leverage chatbot technology into their existing services, such as Siri and Messenger. In addition, Apple can focus on developing chatbot technology emphasizing user privacy and security, while Meta can develop chatbot technology that elevates social connections. If this happens, then the chatbot market will become more competitive.

Privacy

Google and Microsoft don’t have a solid reputation for privacy control. On the other hand, Apple is known for its top-notch user privacy policy. So, if users cannot trust the way the platform handles the data, they will be hesitant to share sensitive information with the chatbot.

In fact, even if you ask the chatbot to check your programming code, it saves the response in its database and might show your code to the other person asking for a similar code query. Since Apple dominates in terms of privacy, it gets an edge in this aspect.

Chatbots Are in the “Development” Phase

Despite the popularity of ChatGPT, users know that it cannot provide accurate results all the time. Experts have mentioned that large language models, which are the basis for ChatGPT and Bard, are likely to make errors due to the way they are built. They are fed with databases of billions of words, so they predict the phrases in order to respond to queries.

The responses of chatbots will get better as they learn and improve their responses with the passage of time. Currently, chatbots are in the development phase, thereby their accuracy is doubtable. Owing to that, users might use chatbots to get quick responses, but they will still use other channels to validate critical data. Therefore, the dominance of Google/Microsoft with chatbots can only make an impact if they can guarantee accurate responses and gain the trust of users.

Wrapping Up

The world’s obsession with chatbots is justifiable, as they offer human-like responses in natural language. However, ChatGPT, Bard, and other chatbots still have a lot of areas to improve. It is true that Google and Microsoft are dominating the chatbot market with billions of investments, but their competition is more between themselves compared to Apple and Meta.

Microsoft intends to break the hold of Google in the search engine market, while Google doesn’t want to compromise its ads revenue with the emergence of ChatGPT. To sum up, it is very unlikely that Apple and Meta/Facebook will end with the dominance of chatbots because of their differentiating products/services. The debates will be more on Google vs. Microsoft instead of Apple/Meta vs. Google/Microsoft.