Pioneering Change: Google’s Introduction of the Innovative ‘Bard’

The launch of ChatGPT rattled several tech companies. Google, whose revenue is heavily dependent on its search business—something ChatGPT could eventually threaten—has particularly been concerned.Now, less than three months into ChatGPT’s existence, Google has announced the launch of a ChatGPT-styled AI called Bard to take on the seemingly unchallenged reign of ChatGPT. But how will Bard work? Will Bard be better than ChatGPT? Here’s everything we know so far.

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What Is Google’s Bard AI?

Bard is a Google-owned experimental AI language model capable of generating human-sounding responses to prompts or inputs given. It is built on top of Google’s powerful conversational language model, LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications).

Bard was announced by Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, on Google’s The Keyword blog, finally putting a face to a long-rumored product that Google had in the pipeline to rival ChatGPT.

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Unlike ChatGPT, Sundar Pichai explained that Bard will initially only be available to a few trusted testers, with plans to scale to more users. The announcement also showcased what the initial release would look like with several examples—some of which look strikingly similar to what ChatGPT would do. So, is Bard going to be just another ChatGPT?

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Why Google Bard Could Be Better Than ChatGPT

ChatGPT was released on November 30, 2022, after a lengthy development period. The entire development process, including the base technology that powers it, spanned several years. At first glance, this would mean Google had less than three months to build a product to rival ChatGPT, a product built on years of evolving technology.

However, the reality is different. Google has invested heavily in Artificial Intelligence fields like Natural Language Processing for several years. In a seeming twist of fate, while Google is trying to rival ChatGPT, the very technology architecture that powers ChatGPT , known as the Transformer architecture, is a brainchild of Google’s research. In other words, Google is now trying to outcompete a business threat that is technically built on Google technology.

In an apparent reference to ChatGPT, Sundar Pichai was quick to point out its pioneering status in building Transformer models in its Bard announcement blog post. He stressed that Google research is “the basis of many of the generative AI applications” currently available today.

However, beyond his words, the evidence is clear. This is why LaMDA, the technology that powers Bard AI, is very similar to GPT-3, which powers ChatGPT. So, no, Google is not a newcomer in the race to create a general-purpose AI chatbot. On the contrary, the company has been building similar, if not better, technology for years, and may enjoy a significant advantage over OpenAI on who finally becomes the top dog.

But that’s not all. Google also enjoys the advantage of having more data to play with. In the AI business, especially when it comes to training conversational models like GPT-3 and LaMDA, more data could mean better results. It is not entirely clear whether and how Google intends to integrate live data or information from the web into Bard’s responses. However, if this happens, it would be a significant advantage over ChatGPT’s pre-trained approach to responding to prompts.

In simpler terms, this would mean Google’s Bard would be able to provide fresh, up-to-date responses while ChatGPT would, unfortunately, be limited to information relating to events, not beyond 2021 (ChatGPT’s current data training cut-off).

How Will Google Bard Work?

From the demonstrations Google has provided, it’s not entirely clear whether Bard will exist as a standalone prompt-response web interface like ChatGPT “after the initial testing phase.”

However, in typical Google fashion, Google will almost certainly push to deeply integrate Bard into most of its products, including Google Search, akin to what Microsoft is trying to do with Bing and other Microsoft products using ChatGPT technology.

Google’s Bard Demonstration Features Factual Issues

But despite the interest and understandable hype with Google’s Bard announcement, its first demonstration didn’t go well. Eagle-eyed astronomers quickly pointed out that at least one of the “facts” delivered by Bard was completely wrong. For example, Bard stated that the James Webb Space Telescope “took the very pictures of a planet outside of our own solar system,” but the European Very Large Telescope accomplished that accolade in 2004.

Bard is still in its very early stages, but its false statement was a clear indicator of the issues of integrating conversational AI technology deeper into general internet search, where many will trust what is written.

Will Google’s Bard AI Be Better Than ChatGPT?

Google has been sitting on a wealth of truly phenomenal AI tools, only periodically giving the public a glimpse of what it has to offer.

With OpenAI’s bold bet to open ChatGPT, with all its associated risk, to the public, Google might finally break away from its fear of reputational damage and show the world what it has to offer. If the glimpses of Google’s AI models we’ve seen over the years are anything to go by, then ChatGPT might truly have a worthy competitor in Google Bard.

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