Sergey Brin is back at Google—and he’s working on AI

Google cofounder Sergey Brin is back in Mountain View and has reportedly been making regular appearances at the company’s offices.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Brin, who stepped down from his executive role at the company in 2019, has been coming to the office three to four days a week for months now to work alongside researchers that are building Google’s AI model, Gemini.

Brin and cofounder Larry Page both stepped down from executive roles at Alphabet in December 2019 and passed on control of the company to the current CEO, Sundar Pichai. Brin and Page still maintain seats on the company’s board.

According to the Journal, Brin has been significantly involved in Gemini and has convened weekly discussions about new AI research with employees. Brin has also reportedly been involved in personnel decisions, including the hiring of sought-after researchers. The work has happened predominantly in the Charleston East building on Alphabet’s campus, where Pichai also has an office. Pichai has reportedly encouraged Brin’s contributions.

Brin has a known passion for AI, and with the ever-evolving AI landscape, Google is also at risk of falling behind its competition.

In December, the New York Times reported that Brin and Page were called on for support for the AI program after Pichai issued a “code red” in response to the launch of ChatGPT. At the time, the publication reported that Google planned to unveil more than 20 new products in 2023 that demonstrated chatbot features of its search engine to compete with the OpenAI product.

Now Google has not only ChatGPT to worry about but also several other recently unveiled AI products, including Meta’s Llama 2 made through a partnership with Microsoft, which was unveiled this week.