Alphabet’s Google has announced that it is replacing Sissie Hsiao, who spearheaded the creation of the AI chatbot Bard, which is now called Gemini.
The head of Google's AI chatbot development project, Bard, which has now been renamed Gemini, Sissie Hsiao, will leave her position immediately.
She will be replaced by Josh Woodward, head of Google Labs, who also managed the introduction of NotebookLM, the company's well-known application that converts text into a podcast-like program.
Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said the move will “sharpen our focus on the next evolution of the Gemini app.” He said Woodward will remain head of Google Labs while shaping the next chapter of Gemini.
Hsiao, in a separate staff memo, called her time as head of the team “chapter 1″ of the Bard story, and said she was optimistic in handing the baton to Woodward for “chapter 2.”
Hsiao plans to take a “short break” and return to Google in a new role.
Hsiao, a 19-year Google veteran, acted quickly when ChatGPT disrupted the tech sector and compelled Google to speed the adoption of its own AI technologies.
Although the transformer-based architecture that enabled the development of the massive language models that drove ChatGPT was invented by Google engineers, the corporation chose to mostly conceal their chatbot efforts due to its unpredictability.
Accidents demonstrated the reason in the competitive rush. Conservatives targeted Bard's Gemini image creation tool after it produced humiliating results, adding images of women or people of color when asked to make images of Vikings, Nazis, and the Pope. Bard's debut was slammed for "hallucinations."
However, Google's successful product introductions allowed them to swiftly move over those initial mistakes. Gemini 2.5 smashed rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic's AI benchmarks last week. In Chatbot Arena, where users vote on their preferred large language model responses, it emerged victorious.
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Woodward's Google Labs team was using the company's AI algorithms to quickly develop new consumer goods while the Gemini app took center stage.