“Bard”, Google’s tool to compete with ChatGPT

(CNN) — Google unveiled a new chatbot tool dubbed “Bard” on Monday in an apparent attempt to compete with the viral success of ChatGPT.

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and parent company Alphabet, said in a blog post that Bard will be open to “trusted testers” starting this Monday, with plans to make it available to the public “in the coming weeks.”

Like ChatGPT, which was released publicly at the end of November by the artificial intelligence research company OpenAI, Bard is based on a huge language model. These models are trained on vast amounts of online data to generate compelling answers to user questions.

“Bard seeks to combine the breadth of world knowledge with the power, intelligence, and creativity of our great language models,” Pichai wrote. “He draws on information from the web to deliver fresh, high-quality answers.”

The announcement comes at a time when Google’s main product, online search, is facing its biggest risk in years. In the two months since its public release, ChatGPT has been used to generate essays, stories and song lyrics, and to answer a few questions one might have previously Googled.

Apparently, the immense attention paid to ChatGPT led Google management to declare a “code red” status for its search business. In a tweet last year, Paul Buchheit, one of the creators of Gmail, warned that Google “could only be a year or two away from total disruption” due to the rise of artificial intelligence.

Microsoft, which confirmed its plans to invest billions in OpenAI, has already said it will incorporate the tool into some of its products, and rumored which plans to integrate it into its search engine, Bing. Microsoft plans to hold an information event at its Washington headquarters on Tuesday, the subject of which has not yet been announced. Microsoft publicly announced the event shortly after Google unveiled its artificial intelligence on Monday.

The underlying Bard technology has been around for a long time, although it is not publicly available. Google introduced its Language Model for Dialog Applications (or LaMDA) two years ago and announced on Monday that this technology will be the basis for Bard. LaMDA made headlines late last year when a former Google engineer claimed the chatbot was “aware.” His claims were heavily criticized in the artificial intelligence community.

In Monday’s post, Google gave the example of a user asking Bard to explain new discoveries made by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in a way that might interest a 9-year-old. Bard responds with conversational bullet points. The first reads: “In 2023, the James Webb Space Telescope discovered a series of galaxies nicknamed ‘green peas.’ They were given this name because they are small, round, and green, like peas.”

Bard can be used to plan a friend’s baby shower, compare two Oscar-nominated movies, or get lunch ideas based on what’s in the fridge, according to the Google post.

Pichai also said on Monday that AI-based tools will soon begin rolling out in Google’s main search tool.

“You’ll soon see AI-powered features in search that extract complex information and multiple perspectives into easy-to-digest formats, so you can quickly understand the big picture and learn more from the web,” Pichai wrote, “whether looking for additional perspectives , like blogs from people who play both piano and guitar, or delving into a related topic, like getting started as a beginner.”

If Google moves further in the direction of incorporating an AI chatbot tool into search, it could come with some risks. Because these tools are trained on online data, experts have pointed out that they have the potential to perpetuate bias and spread misinformation.

“It is essential,” Pichai wrote in his post, “that we bring experiences rooted in these models to the world in a bold and responsible way.”