'Godfather of AI' Geoffrey Hinton declares the winner in ChatGPT vs Google Gemini fight

AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton believes Google is now surpassing OpenAI in the AI race, a development he finds surprisingly late. Hinton points to Google's Gemini 3, its AI chip advantage, and vast data as key strengths. He notes Google's past caution stemmed from earlier AI missteps, but now predicts their dominance.
The "Godfather of AI," Geoffrey Hinton, believes Google is catching up with OpenAI in the artificial intelligence (AI) race. Hinton, a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto and former Google Brain expert, also said he is surprised that Google took this long to surpass its competitors. In an interview with Business Insider, when discussing Google's position relative to OpenAI, Hinton said, "I think it's actually more surprising than it's taken this long for Google to overtake OpenAI. I think that right now they're beginning to overtake it" This declaration follows the widely praised launch of Google's Gemini 3, an update that many in the tech world believe has elevated the company above OpenAI's GPT-5. Google's Nano Banana Pro AI image model has also been very successful. This shift comes three years after Google reportedly declared a "code red" following the initial release of ChatGPT, with recent reports now suggesting that OpenAI may be the one sounding the alarm.
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Geoffrey Hinton says Google has an AI chip advantage In addition to the successful release of its newest AI model, Google's stock price increased after reports suggested it may make a billion-dollar deal to provide Facebook-parent Meta with its own AI chips. Creating its own chips is a "big advantage" for Google, Hinton noted. He said: "Google has a lot of very good researchers and obviously a lot of data and a lot of data centres. My guess is Google will win.” Hinton, who helped develop early AI research while working at Google Brain, said the search company once led in AI but chose to hold back."Google was in the lead for a long time, right? Google invented transformers. Google had big chatbots before other people,” Hinton highlighted. However, Google was careful after Microsoft's failed 2016 launch of its short-lived "Tay" AI chatbot, which the company shut down after it posted extremely racist tweets, Hinton explained.“Google, obviously, had a very good reputation and was worried about damaging it like that," Hinton added. Google has had some rough product launches in the past. Last year, it had to stop its AI image generator because people said it was creating historically incorrect images of people of colour and calling the results “too woke.” Earlier versions of its AI search tool also gave strange advice, like telling users to put glue on pizza to keep the cheese from sliding off. Earlier, the company’s CEO Sundar Pichai has even said that the company waited to release its chatbot because it wasn’t ready. "We hadn't quite gotten it to a level where you could put it out and people would've been okay with Google putting out that product. It still had a lot of issues at that time,” Pichai said. Google is also donating $10 million Canadian dollars to help fund the Hinton Chair in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Toronto, and the university will match the amount. Hinton, who left Google in 2023 over concerns about AI risks, has since spoken publicly about dangers such as job loss and AI surpassing human intelligence. In 2024, he even received a Nobel Prize in physics. In a statement, the company said: “Geoff's work on neural networks — spanning his time in academia and his decade here at Google — laid the foundation for modern AI. This chair honors his legacy and will help the university recruit visionary scholars dedicated to the same kind of curiosity-driven, fundamental research that Geoff championed.”
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