Google Launches AI Chatbot Bard in US, UK

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Facts

  • On Tuesday, Google announced that its artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, Bard, will be available to the public on a rolling basis in the US and UK. The company, which has been developing Bard for years, said it’s still an “early experiment.”1
  • Bard can give creative responses to detailed questions in English and engage in back-and-forth conversations. Examples have included helping plan a birthday party and a vacation with children to Tokyo.2
  • Bard was designed by Google's LaMDA language model, and the company says it would work particularly well with "NORA" queries — ones to which there’s "no one right answer."3
  • Google has opened a public waitlist, similar to what rival Microsoft did when implementing ChatGPT technology into its Bing search engine last month, after previously only allowing a hand-picked small group of “trusted testers” to access Bard.4
  • Google has been a forerunner in AI, having invented the "transformer" technology in 2017, which became the "T" in ChatGPT. However, it postponed its public release of Bard reportedly over concerns about company profitability and other internal company dysfunction.2

Sources: 1 Wall Street Journal, 2Guardian, 3 TechCrunch, and 4New York Post.

Narratives

  • Narrative A, as provided by Guardian. Google might be rushing out Bard too soon because of pressure from its competitors. It was already walking a fine line, hoping it doesn’t lose users of its profitable search business to the AI bot. Now it also has to worry about a misinformation problem that could tarnish the company’s reputation. Google might regret not waiting for Bard to be near-perfect while the other companies struggle through their AI rollouts.
  • Narrative B, as provided by Verge. Google may as well get out in front of the AI race because it has something the other companies don’t – a leading search engine that can be a backup for mistakes Bard makes or information it can’t find. For now, Bard is a complement to search. But as it works out the kinks, Google may have just started the future of search.