Jeff Dean says Google built ChatGPT rival LMChat before OpenAI

Google made a talking computer program called LMChat a whole year before the famous ChatGPT came out.

LMChat was made by Google and DeepMind for Google workers to use inside the company.

People at Google enjoyed chatting with LMChat during lunch when everyone was stuck at home because of the pandemic.

But Google decided not to show LMChat to the rest of the world.

Google was worried that LMChat might give wrong answers sometimes.

Google also worried that people might stop using Google Search if they could just ask the chatbot.

Jeff Dean was the person in charge of Google's smart computer projects.

He said Google didn't realize how helpful talking computers could be.

He said people like using them to write notes and to quickly summarize long documents.

Now, after working at Google for 27 years, Jeff Dean is leaving the company.