Way back in 1993, some visionary had the forethought toregisterAI.com as a domain. While the concept ofartificial intelligencedates back decades before that prescient move, the URL has become more topical than ever in the last year, as companies like Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI are locked in a race to get their AI chatbots to the forefront of the zeitgeist. As that’s been happening, whoever’s in charge of the domain now has been having a ball redirecting visitors to a different AI site every few months.
ChatGPT vs. Gemini: Which gives the better answers?
Gemini is bringing ChatGPT some much needed competition
As spotted by9to5Google, visiting AI.com now redirects you to gemini.google.com, the home of Google’s Gemini chatbot. If you’re a frequenter of AI forums, you might have noticed that this URL had been redirecting users to ChatGPT at times in 2023before switching to Twitter’s Grok chatbotat X.ai sometime later in the year. Then in February,some users spottedthat the URL redirected them to an MKBHD video on YouTube about AI. What gives?
AI.com’s tumultuous history
Digging back through theInternet Archive history for ai.compaints an interesting picture — one that makes you think somebody might be out there having a little fun with the recent generative AI craze.
In its earliest days,AI.com was hometo Advanced Instruments Corp., a company providing tech-related services to businesses. It was a stable time for the URL, with the Littleton, CO company hosting its site there through the turn of the century (though it did drop the Comic Sans lookby the year 2000). As of the late 2000s, AI.com had changed hands,becoming home to a sitethat hosted news about AI technologies.
By 2017,it was hometo a more modern-looking AI news site claiming to be “the artificial intelligence epicenter,” complete with a Matrix-style animated background that you could download (anybody remember thatNexus One live wallpaper?). But something happened in 2018, and by 2019, the owners of the URLhad an ad upsaying the domain was for sale.
By 2020, it was returning an HTTP 301 error (moved permanently), and from 2022 until now it has been returning a 302 (URL redirect). Once it entered this state, the apparent trolling began — as ofJuly 2023, it was redirecting to ChatGPT, then it started sending visitors to X’s Grok AI chatbot landing page byNovember 2023. Then, aroundFebruary 20, 2024, it started redirecting to the MKBHD video. But that was short-lived, as it started redirecting to Google Gemini onFebruary 29, where the URL still sends you today.
So while typing out “ai.com” might be easier than entering “gemini.google.com” into your address bar, you might just want to make a bookmark before you get too comfortable with that shortcut. As Forrest Gump’s mama said back when this site was still dripping in Comic Sans, you never know what you’re going to get.
