A man walks through Google offices on January 25, 2023 in New York City.Leonardo Munoz | Corbis News | Getty ImagesGoogle is testing new artificial intelligence-powered chat products that are likely to influence a future public product launch. They include a new chatbot and a potential way to integrate it into a search engine.The Alphabet company is working on a project under its cloud unit called “Atlas,” which is a “code red” effort to respond to ChatGPT, the large-language chatbot that took the public by storm when it went public late last year. Google is also testing a chatbot called “Apprentice Bard,” where employees can ask questions and receive detailed answers similar to ChatGPT. Another product unit has been testing a new search desktop design that could be used in a question-and-answer form. Leaders have been asking more employees for feedback on the efforts in recent weeks. CNBC viewed internal documents and spoke with sources about the efforts currently underway.The product tests come after a recent all-hands meeting where employees raised concerns about the company’s competitive edge in AI, given the sudden popularity of ChatGPT, which was launched by OpenAI, a San Francisco-based startup that’s backed by Microsoft. …
