Tech Desk 
Aug 23, 2024
In a move to strengthen its position in the realm of AI, Google has appointed former Character.AI founder Noam Shazeer as the co-lead of its main AI project.
Accompanying Jeff Dean and Oriol Vinyals, other co-leaders for Google's AI models, the former Google researcher will serve at Google as a technical lead for Gemini, Google said in a memo to staff.
Google Gemini is a series of well-developed, yet developing further, AI models overseen by Google's AI division named DeepMind, which Google is incorporating into products such as Search and Pixel smartphones.
Shazeer's rehiring at Google comes three years after he resigned from Google and embarked on establishing his own AI tool titled "Character.AI".
Seeing Character.AI as a potent web application for AI chatbot, Google indulged in striking a licensing deal with the AI startup, committing all in its grasp while agreeing to disburse billions.
"We are thrilled to join the best team on earth building the most valuable technology on earth," Shazeer wrote in an email reply to the memo seen by Reuters.
