Jacob Devlin, a prominent artificial intelligence researcher who left Google for rival OpenAI in January after complaining internally about how the company trained its Bard AI chatbot software, has returned to his old job, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.

Google’s willingness to hire Devlin back, despite the fact his internal complaints became public and embarrassed the tech company, reflects the intense competition for talent in the field as a wide array of tech companies and startups race to develop services that automate tasks involving text, software code and video production.