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On February 6, 2023, Google announced Bard, an experimental conversation AI service, to catch up to the hugely popular chatbot ChatGPT from the Microsoft-backed company OpenAI. In a blog post, alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai wrote that the service would initially be accessible for trusted testers before becoming more broadly accessible to the general public in the upcoming weeks.

What Is Bard?

Bard is a new conversational artificial intelligence service currently being tested by a small group of people with plans to go public in the upcoming weeks. This is a part of the business's attempt to catch up to rivals like OpenAI, the maker of the well-known chatbot ChatGPT.

Users could use the company's language models "as a companion to search," Pichai had hinted during the company's results conference call last week. This statement comes as Microsoft, another major player in the technology sector, is reportedly investing $10 billion in the startup Artificial Intelligence (AI) research lab OpenAI and wants to integrate AI capabilities across a variety of its software products, including Google rival Bing.

AI chatbot Bard uses information from the web to provide new data and updates. Bard will respond in-depth to user inquiries like planning a friend's baby, comparing two oscar nominated movies, or for lunch suggestions, just like ChatGPT. Google will make Bard available and allow developers to build on its existing AI models.

Next month, businesses, individuals, and organizations will be able to test the Generative Language API, which LaMDA will initially power with support for additional language models.

Google Launches ChatGPT-Rival as its knowledge is currently limited to internet data up to 2021. The service may have an advantage when responding to inquiries concerning recent occurrences.

Features of Bard

The new experimental tool, named Bard, provides textual answers to questions submitted by users using data gathered from the web. In a post, Pichai also gave readers a sneak peek at new search engine capabilities that will utilize AI to respond to user inquiries and announced that it would make some of its AI programs available to third-party developers.

Google used the request from a user to Bard to describe recent discoveries made by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope in a way that a 9-year-old may find engaging, as an example in the post on Monday. Bard answers in the form of talking points.

In apparent contrast to rival programs like ChatGPT, which can spout made-up material in answer to some user queries. Google officials have also claimed they need to be faster and more careful with their products.

Google executives claim that they must evaluate new tools to ensure that they don't display prejudice and to prevent misuse, worries that are echoed by many academics. Like ChatGPT, which the AI research company OpenAI formally unveiled in late November, Bard is based on a sizable language model.

These models are trained on massive web data sets to generate interesting responses to user signals.

Google CEO Take on Bard

Pichai also emphasized how the firm changed its focus to AI six years ago and has been utilizing AI to enhance its search engine for several years. This is because, according to him, more individuals are turning to Google to gain a deeper understanding of complicated subjects rather than making an effort to research them themselves.

"People frequently desire to investigate a variety of viewpoints or beliefs. When there is no one correct answer to a topic, AI can be helpful in synthesizing findings, "added Pichai. He mentioned that people would soon see AI-powered features in Google Search that distill complex information and multiple perspectives into easy-to-digest formats so that they quickly understand the big picture and learn more from the web.

"Whether it’s applying AI to radically transform our products or making these powerful tools available to others, we’ll continue to be bold with innovation and responsible in our approach," Pichai said. Google's cloud division works with companies such as Canada-based AI startup Cohere and NYSE-listed AI software firm C3.

In a different internal email, which The Wall Street Journal was able to view, Pichai stated that Google's entire staff would have access to Bard the following week to provide feedback as part of a "company-wide dogfood," which is slang for using or testing one's products in the tech industry.

What is ChatGPT All About?

How does ChatGPT work? ChatGPT works based on neural networks to make sense of writing and then uses that knowledge to become good with words. The launch of Google's new products coincides with a flurry of statements by rival Microsoft regarding its usage of OpenAI-developed AI capabilities.

In response to Microsoft's disclosures, investors have complained that, while having invented some of the technology used to create tools like ChatGPT, Google hasn't moved swiftly enough to expose its own internal AI capabilities.

Bard vs ChatGPT

Google Launches ChatGPT-Rival and have reportedly accelerated efforts to assess and make available to the public artificial intelligence programs. They have also reportedly assigned teams of engineers to work on novel methods to integrate new advances into areas like the core search experience.

Bravely and responsibly, we must share experiences grounded in these principles with the world, wrote Pichai in a blog post published on Monday. We are dedicated to safely developing AI because of this. He stated that to ensure that Bard provides replies that satisfy Google's requirements, the new external testing phase for it would be paired with internal research.

Microsoft has stated that it will spend billions on OpenAI. According to previous statements, the technology will be incorporated into some of Microsoft's products. Additionally, it is asserted that Microsoft wants to include it in Bing, its search engine.

Google has reportedly said Bard's service is based on its experimental artificial intelligence program, LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications). Last year Google suspended an engineer who contended that LaMDA had become sentient, a claim roundly rejected by scientists in the field.

When OpenAI released ChatGPT late last year, it became a viral sensation. The underlying technology that supports Bard has been there for a while, despite not being readily available to the general public.

Regulators in the US, the European Union, and other countries are paying close attention to Google. A new AI rule that may mandate businesses to do risk assessments before releasing new tools is being considered by legislators in the EU.

Microsoft announced last month that it invested multiple years and billions of dollars in the San Francisco AI firm. It announced that it would be allowing developers to build upon its tools and incorporating them into services like its Bing search engine, creating the possibility of a new threat to Google Search's dominant position in the industry.