Google unveiled “Bard” yesterday. Here’s what you need to know about the ChatGPT’s rival

OpenAI’s ChatGPT, an automated text generation system, has been all the rage since its public beta release two months ago, but its moment in the spotlight is quickly coming to an end.

On Monday, Google finally confirmed that its much-rumored artificial intelligence chatbot project is, in fact, real and on the way. Innovation Village hopes to learn a lot more about this new project, which goes by the name Bard, at the “Google Presents” event in Paris on Wednesday.

According to a blog post published by Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Monday, Bard will operate as a “experimental conversational AI service.” It is an extension of the LaMDA platform, which Google has been working on for the past two years.

Pichai declared, “Bard seeks to combine the breadth of the world’s knowledge with the power, intelligence, and creativity of our large language models.” It uses data collected from the web to generate new, high-quality solutions. Irrespective of whether or not this over-reliance on technology leads to bigoted or racist behaviour, as seemingly every chatbot before it has exhibited, remains to be seen.

Contrary to ChatGPT, this programme will not be made freely available online. As a first step, Google is rolling out a version of LaMDA with reduced functionality to a small group of trusted users. This version has much lower system requirements than its fully-featured siblings.

Pichai said, “We’ll combine external feedback with our own internal testing to make sure Bard’s responses meet a high bar for quality, safety, and groundedness in real-world information.” As the testing progresses, the company hopes to learn more and increase both Bard’s quality and its speed.

Google’s plans for more extensive AI mechanisations include expanding into conversation with internet users. “According to Pichai, “you’ll see AI-powered features in Search that distil complex information and multiple perspectives into easy-to-digest formats, so you can quickly understand the big picture and learn more from the web.” This is because, as search queries become more complex and nuanced, so will these features.

He continued by saying that “soon” users would have access to such improvements. The Generative Language API, a commercial API built on top of LaMDA, will be made available to a small group of developers for testing next month.

The CEO didn’t give many details on what Bard is capable of beyond the flowery “[it’s] a launchpad for curiosity, helping you to explain new discoveries from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to a 9-year-old,” prose he offered.

Details will likely be revealed at the company’s “Google Presents” event, which will be broadcast live from Paris on February 8th.