However, DeepMind considers Sparrow a research-based, proof-of-concept model that is not ready to be deployed, said Geoffrey Irving, a safety researcher at DeepMind and lead author of the paper introducing Sparrow.

“We have not deployed the system because we think that it has a lot of biases and flaws of other types,” said Irving. “I think the question is, how do you weigh the communication advantages — like communicating with humans — against the disadvantages?

Seems less speculative than a company with more resources, more know-how, more talent, more training data, more compute, more product experience, more anything, somehow unable to ship a competing product. But that seems the common conclusion people draw.