Google's Using AI to Crank Out a Big Chunk of Its Code

As Google continues to push the boundaries of AI, it's not just integrating the technology into its products and services -- it's also using AI to build them.

On its third-quarter earnings call Tuesday, CEO Sundar Pichai said that more than a quarter of all new code at Google is generated by AI, then reviewed and accepted by engineers.

"We're … using AI internally to improve our coding processes, which is boosting productivity and efficiency," Pichar said. "This helps our engineers do more and move faster."

As the generative AI era has unfolded over the last couple of years, Google has positioned itself as both a creator and user of AI tools. Most visibly, it has made its Gemini AI platform central to its products, from its Pixel phones to its search tools to Google Maps, and its Gemini chatbot competes directly with OpenAI's ChatGPT. 

Whether AI doing coding work is good, bad or a wash for software engineers has yet to be settled. But as CNET's Connie Guglielmo pointed out earlier this week, "If software engineers need to start rethinking what they do, then it's probably time we all reflect on how AI will change our jobs in the not-too-distant future."

Meanwhile, Google faces challenges of its own following an August ruling that its search and ad business is a monopoly. One of the more drastic potential outcomes could be a breakup of the company and regulatory oversight that might impact how it integrates and expands its AI-driven offerings.

Watch this: ChatGPT Plus vs. Google Gemini Advanced: Battle of the Premium AI Chatbots

Pichai's remarks came as parent company Alphabet reported quarterly revenue of $88.3 billion, with Google Services (including search) up 13% from the same period last year and with Google Cloud, which provides AI infrastructure to other companies, up 35%.

On the call, Pichai said the company is also working on bringing down costs associated with powering AI, particularly when it comes to running AI Overviews, the AI-written summaries of Google search queries that appear at the top of search results. These costs have recently dropped by more than 90%, he said, thanks to "hardware, engineering, and technical breakthroughs." 

Pichai said that Google has doubled the size of its custom Gemini model and that user engagement with AI Overviews is climbing, with people asking longer and more complex questions. The company started rolling out the tool to more than a hundred new countries and territories this week, extending its reach to more than 1 billion users monthly.

He also teased Project Astra, designed to let AI "see and reason about the world around you," saying that experiences like that could become available as early as next year.