April 18 (Reuters) - Alphabet-owned Google

said on Thursday it would consolidate teams that focus on

building artificial intelligence models across its Research and

DeepMind divisions in its latest push to develop its AI

portfolio.

Google will relocate its Responsible AI teams - which

focuses on safe AI development - from Research to DeepMind so

that they are closer to where AI models are built and scaled,

the company said in a blog post.

The move comes amid growing global concerns about AI safety

and increasing calls for regulation of the technology.

The DeepMind team helped develop Google's most advanced

artificial intelligence model, Gemini, which was unveiled late

last year and can crunch different forms of information such as

video, audio and text.

While the rollout of Gemini helped boost Alphabet's share

price, it came under fire after inaccuracies in some historical

image generation depictions. Google then paused its image

generation capabilities.

The search engine giant had merged its research units Google

Brain and DeepMind a year back to sharpen its focus on AI

development and get ahead of rivals like Microsoft ( MSFT ), a

partner of ChatGPT and Sora maker OpenAI.

Separately, Microsoft ( MSFT ) also tapped DeepMind

co-founder Mustafa Suleyman as the head of its newly created

consumer AI unit last month.

The consolidation at Google's AI team follows on the heels

of a series of job cuts and cost reductions, even as the company

ramps up its investment in AI and automation.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai said last year that the company

plans on releasing a series of AI models in 2024.