Aug 2 (Reuters) - Character.AI said on Friday it had

signed an agreement with Alphabet's Google that grants

the search engine giant a non-exclusive license to the chatbot

maker's current large language model technology.

The co-founders of Character.AI, Noam Shazeer and Daniel De

Freitas, will join Google along with some other members of the

company's research team.

Dominic Perella, Character.AI's general counsel, will become

the interim CEO of the company, effective immediately, it said

in a blog.

The deal also provides increased funding for Character.AI,

the blog said, without disclosing the amount.

"We're particularly thrilled to welcome back Noam, a

preeminent researcher in machine learning, who is joining Google

DeepMind's research team, along with a small number of his

colleagues," a Google spokesperson said.

Law firm Sullivan & Cromwell advised on the deal.

(Reporting by Juby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Alan Barona

and Devika Syamnath)