Google has launched its own artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, in response to the wildly successful ChatGPT. The new chatbot service will be called Bard and will be made available to "trusted users" before a public release in the coming weeks, according to Alphabet Inc., Google's parent company.
ChatGPT's Success
ChatGPT is an AI chatbot that was released by research firm OpenAI late last year. The chatbot leverages a huge amount of text data to help generate answers and carry out realistic conversations, disrupting the way people prepare for job interviews, journalists write stories, and children do homework. In less than two months, ChatGPT has been used by over 100 million users worldwide.
Alphabet CEO's Announcement
In a blog post on Monday, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai announced the launch of Bard, as well as more artificial intelligence for Google's search engine and developers. He described it as a "really exciting time" to be working on these technologies and how they can help people.
Bard's Functionality
Bard will be powered by LaMDA, Google's AI that can generate prose so human-like that a company engineer last year called it sentient, a claim that was widely dismissed by the technology giant and scientists. LaMDA has been restricted to limited testing until now. Pichai explained that Bard will be released with a lightweight model version of LaMDA, which requires less computing power and allows for more feedback.
Conclusion
Google's Bard is poised to compete with the highly successful ChatGPT. The company will combine external feedback with internal testing to make sure Bard's responses meet high standards for quality, safety, and accuracy. Google is excited for this phase of testing to continue to learn and improve Bard's quality and speed. Meanwhile, rival Microsoft is also set to shake up its own products with AI, including its search engine Bing, after investing in OpenAI.
Technomancer is a science and tech enthusiast who enjoys writing about software and AI and other tech topics.
