Google employees are testing potential competitors to ChatGPT, including its own chatbot “Apprentice Bard” – CNBC reported, citing sources and internal communication.

The bot is said to use Google’s own language technology called LaMDA, or Language Model for Dialogue Applications.

This comes just a few weeks after the tech giant’s leadership announced that it had issued a “code red” for the rise of ChatGPT, which has been making waves lately for being able to generate human-like written text.

Apprentice Bard appears to work in a similar way to ChatGPT, as users can ask a question in a dialog box and get an answer, according to CNBC. Users can also give feedback about the answer to the bot.

When asked if there would be further layoffs at Google – which laid off 12,000 employees in January – Apprentice Bard responded that it was “unlikely” there would be another round of layoffs in 2023, CNBC reported, citing an internally circulated example.

Publicly available information shows that Alphabet’s – Google’s parent company – revenue grew 41% in 2021, while Alphabet’s Class A shares have fallen 32% since January 2022.

In addition to Apprentice Bard, Google is testing other AI-powered products, including a search page.

“We believe AI is a foundational and transformative technology that is hugely beneficial to people, businesses and communities, and as outlined in our AI principles, we must consider the broader societal impacts these innovations can have.”

said Lily Lin, Google spokesperson.

Google did not comment specifically on the projects reported by CNBC, but told Insider that it has long focused on developing and deploying AI to improve people’s lives.