Google is ready for a showdown in the AI arena with the launch of “Bard,” its new conversational service aimed at taking on the massively popular ChatGPT tool backed by Microsoft. According to Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s Monday blog post, Bard will first be available to a select group of “trusted testers” before being widely released later in the year.
Bard is designed to explain complex subjects like outer space discoveries in terms a child can understand. It can also handle everyday tasks, such as offering party planning tips or lunch ideas based on the food in your fridge. However, Pichai didn’t mention whether Bard could write prose like William Shakespeare, the inspiration behind the service’s name.
Google’s announcement of Bard came just two weeks after Microsoft revealed its plans to pour billions of dollars into OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT and other AI tools that can write readable text and generate new images. This move ramped up the pressure on Google to prove it can keep up in a field that many experts believe will change the world as much as personal computers, the internet, and smartphones have.
A recent CNBC report said Google engineers working on AI tech had been told to prioritize a response to ChatGPT. Bard, previously part of Google’s “Atlas” project, was created as part of Google’s “code red” initiative to counter ChatGPT’s success, which has drawn in tens of millions of users upon release last year while also raising concerns about its potential to write entire essays for students.
Pichai has been highlighting the importance of AI for the past six years, with one of the most notable results being the “Language Model for Dialogue Applications” or LaMDA, which will power Bard. Google also plans to integrate LaMDA and other AI advancements into its search engine to provide more helpful answers to its billions of users. Pichai indicated that these AI tools will soon be deployed in Google’s search without a specific timeline.
Google’s commitment to AI took another step forward last week by announcing its investment in and partnership with Anthropic, an AI startup led by former OpenAI leaders. Anthropic has created its own AI chatbot, Claude, with a mission focused on AI safety.
