Bard, that's what Google is calling its AI chatbot, meant to rival OpenAI's ChatGPT. Bard is an experimental service which is being made available for public testing, wrote Google CEO Sundar Pichai in a blog post. The new AI-powered chatbot is based on Google's LaMDA technology, which is the company's Language Model for Dialogue applications. Previously, LaMDA was in the news because a Google engineer thought the chatbot was sentient. Google's announcement comes even as it gets ready to host an AI event on Wednesday. In his blog post Pichai wrote, "We’ve been working on an experimental conversational AI service, powered by LaMDA, that we’re calling Bard. And today, we’re taking another step forward by opening it up to trusted testers ahead of making it more widely available to the public in the coming weeks." Keep in mind, even Google's LaMDA is open for public testing via its AI Test Kitchen app, but it is restricted waitlist. Only those approved get access to test LaMDA. It looks like with Bard, Google is taking a slightly more open approach as it gives access to more users. He added that users will be able to rely on Bard to simplify complex topics such as understanding the James Webb Space Telescope. Based on the screenshots Google has shared, Bard will be able to answer in a conversational manner, with longer paragraphs similar to how ChatGPT works at the moment. But Pichai also said this was a much smaller and lightweight model they are making public, which will "require significantly less computing power, enabling us to scale to more users, allowing for more feedback." The blogpost does not confirm how a user can sign up for Bard for now. Nor does it confirm the full capabilities of Bard and these details will likely be revealed at the special event. Google's own AI event comes even as Microsoft has announced a surprise event on AI in partnership with OpenAI. Microsoft is expected to announced how it plans to integrate ChatGPT into its search engine Bing, which could pose more of a headache to Google Search business as well. AI in Search Pichai's blog post also made it clear that the company plans to integrate AI-powered features in Search. He wrote in the blog post that users are "turning to Google for deeper insights and understanding — like, 'is the piano or guitar easier to learn, and how much practice does each need?'". He added that in order to understand such a topic, "people often want to explore a diverse range of opinions or perspectives," and that's where AI can help. So clearly AI will be used to "synthesising insights for questions where there’s no one right answer." The post notes that Google will add "AI-powered features in Search that distill complex information and multiple perspectives into easy-to-digest formats so you can quickly understand the big picture and learn more from the web: whether that’s seeking out additional perspectives, like blogs from people who play both piano and guitar, or going deeper on a related topic, like steps to get started as a beginner." It is not clear when these will start rolling out. It is also not clear on how this will impact traffic for other websites, and blogs, if Google's AI-feature is giving all the detailed answers.
