Google: 2024 TIME100 Most Influential Companies

Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer of Alphabet Inc., during an interview on May 1, 2024. Credit - David Paul Morris—Bloomberg/Getty Images

Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet, may have been more hesitant than OpenAI to release its AI tools into the world in recent years, but CEO Sundar Pichai is making sure it moves swiftly to level up. In February, its AI lab Google DeepMind unveiled chatbot Gemini, and during its annual developer conference on May 14, Pichai showed how Google has begun integrating its cutting-edge AI systems into its products, such as offering AI-generated summaries of internet search results and emails, and AI-powered photo searching. Google DeepMind continues to work on AI systems to transform science and on May 8 it announced AlphaFold 3, which is poised to revolutionize drug discovery. And as over half the world’s population heads to the polls in what is shaping up to be the biggest election year ever globally, Google’s Jigsaw team, which builds tech to combat threats to open societies, is pioneering AI tools and techniques for handling misinformation and disinformation and raising the quality of online conversations.

Write to Will Henshall at will.henshall@time.com.