Google announces the release of its experimental conversational AI service, named Bard, in an effort to compete with Microsoft’s recent AI protégé ChatGPT.
Bard by Google is the latest AI chatbot to hit the market and give ChatGPT a run for its money – or in this case, a test run for its money. Google introduced its experimental conversational AI chatbot Monday afternoon.
The Google chief posted the announcement as a personal message on the Google corporate company news blog Monday.
The Bard reveal comes just two days before the already scheduled AI and search reimagination event “Google presents- Live from Paris" event on Wednesday, February 8.
Almost minutes after the Bard news break, Microsoft publicly announced its own rival press conference to take place February 7.
Microsoft spokesperson said Tuesday’s media event will “share some progress on a few exciting projects,” the assumption being that the tech giant will formally announce Open AI’s ChatGPT integration with Microsoft’s own Bing search engine.
Microsoft recently pledged 10 billion dollars to help fund Open AI, the developer of ChatGTP. The rival chatbot has clocked over 100 million users since it was launched this past November.
Google's Bard shakes up AI competition
Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai is calling the new conversational chatbot “a launchpad for curiosity” and “an important next step on our AI journey.”
“Bard seeks to combine the breadth of the world’s knowledge with the power, intelligence and creativity of our large language models. It draws on information from the web to provide fresh, high-quality responses,” Pichai wrote.
The Bard is expected to eventually replace the iconic Google search bar and give the user an entirely new way to “simplify complex topics” in a more human conversational approach as compared to how Google's current search results are typically displayed.
Here is a screenshot of the Bard “explaining new discoveries from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to a 9-year-old.”
Pichai stated the company wanted to open up the chatbot to trusted testers before its officially launched to the public in the coming weeks.
Bard is powered by Google’s own Language Model for Dialogue Applications, known as LaMDA, which was unveiled two years ago as a next-generation language and conversation model breakthrough.
“When looking for insights, AI features in Search can distill information to help you see the big picture,” stated Pichai.
Bard is now the third iteration of Google’s search function Pichai explained.
“BERT, one of our first Transformer models, was revolutionary in understanding the intricacies of human language. Two years ago, we introduced MUM, which is 1,000 times more powerful than BERT and has a next-level and multi-lingual understanding of information,” Pichai stated in the message.
The company said it plans to expand its arsenal of AI innovations after the full release of Bard. Besides LaMDA, PaLM (Pathways Language Model), and the text-to-image AI model Imagen, Google’s most recent AI music generator MusicLM, was just announced last month.
“It’s a really exciting time to be working on these technologies as we translate deep research and breakthroughs into products that truly help people.” stated Pichai.
Cybernews will be covering both the Microsoft and Google live event for our readers. The Google event is February 8 at 8:30am EST. The Microsoft event is February 7 at 1pm EST.
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are markedmarked