It seems to me that such a split could be because OpenAI has decided that ChatGPT needs to be public to get hype, partners, investment, training data, etc. Goo

It seems to me that such a split could be because OpenAI has decided that ChatGPT needs to be public to get hype, partners, investment, training data, etc. Google many not need or want those things. It's definitely possible that ChatGPT is way better than LaMDA, but I wouldn't take the availability of a public demo as proof of that.