Google launches its ChatGPT competitor called Bard

Google on Monday launched its ChatGPT competitor called Bard.

Bard is designed as an ‘experimental conversational AI service’ that answers users’ queries and participates in conversations. 

CEO Sundar Pichai announced a soft launch to select ‘trusted testers’ to get feedback before a public release in the coming weeks. 

While Google has yet to provide more details, the company shows that users can ask Bard queries, like ‘how to explain new discoveries from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to a 9-year-old’ or ‘plan a friend’s baby shower.’

The initial release of Bard uses the tech giant’s lightweight model version of LaMDA, which requires significantly less computing power, enabling us to scale to more users and allowing for more feedback.

 ‘We’ll combine external feedback with our own internal testing to make sure Bard’s responses meet a in real-world information,’ Pichai shared in Monday’s announcement.

‘We’re excited for this phase of testing to help us continue to learn and improve Bard’s quality and speed.’

He also stressed that the company wants Google’s AI services to be ‘bold and responsible’ as Microsoft’s ChatGPT has been controversial due to misuse.  

In December, ChatGPT came under fire after students were using it to cheat on tests and homework.

ChatGPT, trained on a gigantic sample of text from the internet, can understand human language, conduct conversations with humans and generate detailed text that many have said is human-like and quite impressive.

Bard, however, seems to be taking a slower path to the public.

Pichai shared that testers are ‘a demographically and geographically diverse group of people external to Google’ who will have first access to the AI.

These individuals will test the technology to help improve it and better understand how users will experience the chatbot.

While Google has yet to provide more details, the company shows that users can ask Bard queries, like ‘how to explain discoveries from NASA ‘s James Webb Space Telescope to a 9-year-old’ or ‘plan a friend’s baby shower

ChatGPT is capable of creating complete documents, whereas Bard is starting off small. Google’s AI will first answer queries, but with more details than what is typically seen in the tech giant’s search engine

‘Bard seeks to combine the breadth of the world’s knowledge with the power, intelligence and creativity of our large language models,’ Pichai shared in the blog post.

‘It draws on information from the web to provide fresh, high-quality responses. 

‘Bard can be an outlet for creativity, and a launchpad for curiosity, helping you to explain new discoveries from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to a 9-year-old or learn more about the best strikers in football right now, and then get drills to build your skills.’