Tech giant Google unveils Bard, its ChatGPT rival: All you need to know

In November 2022, OpenAI introduced ChatGPT, an AI-powered chatbot with extraordinary capabilities. Since then, ChatGPT has been the talk of the Internet. 

To further enhance the platform, OpenAI received a multi-billion dollar investment from Redmond tech giant Microsoft. 

At the time of writing this article, ChatGPT has reached over 100M users as of January 2023, making it the fastest-growing consumer application in that time frame, according to a UBS study.

ChatGPT’s viral popularity eventually kept Internet giant Google on its toes, and it even issued a ‘Code Red’ for its search business. 

To tackle ChatGPT head-on, Google, on Monday, February 6, announced its new conversational AI service Bard. 

Bard is an experimental conversational AI service, powered by LaMDA. Built using our large language models and drawing on information from the web, it’s a launchpad for curiosity and can help simplify complex topics → https://t.co/fSp531xKy3 pic.twitter.com/JecHXVmt8l

— Google (@Google) February 6, 2023

Available to trusted testers

Powered by Google’s language model, Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA), Bard will be available to “trusted testers” ahead of making it broadly available to the public in the coming weeks. 

“Bard seeks to combine the breadth of the world’s knowledge with the power, intelligence, and creativity of our large language models,” says Google CEO Sundar Pichai. 

2/ Bard seeks to combine the breadth of the world's knowledge with the power, intelligence, and creativity of our large language models. It draws on information from the web to provide fresh, high-quality responses. Today we're opening Bard up to trusted external testers. pic.twitter.com/QPy5BcERd6

— Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) February 6, 2023

Tweak it with feedback

Google plans to release its lightweight model version of LaMDA, which is smaller and requires less computing power, enabling it to scale to more users and allowing for more feedback. 

During testing, Google will combine the feedback with its internal testing to make sure Bard’s responses meet their ‘high bar for quality, safety, and groundedness in real-world information.’

3/ We'll combine their feedback with our own internal testing to make sure Bard's responses meet our high bar for quality, safety, and groundedness and we will make it more widely available in coming weeks. It's early, we will launch, iterate and make it better.

— Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) February 6, 2023

Draws info from the web

Like ChatGPT, Bard is an AI-powered chatbot that can answer various queries in a humane/conversational manner. Bard draws on information from the web to provide fresh, high-quality responses. 

Google says Bard can help simplify complex topics, like explaining discoveries from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to a 9-year-old.

However, Google didn’t mention anything about Bard’s knowledge and limitations. For example, ChatGPT knowledge is still limited to 2021 data, claims OpenAI, which means it can’t answer questions related to post-2021. 

Google’s investment in AI companies

Besides Bard, Google is pumping money into various organisations, including DeepMind, Anthropic, and others to advance Artificial Intelligence technology. 

Google has invested around $400M (approximately €370M) in Anthropic, an AI safety and research company, developing a ChatGPT rival. 

Earlier this year, Google’s AI division, DeepMind, announced its plan to release a ChatGPT rival named Sparrow. According to its founder Demis Hassabis, the Sparrow chatbot has abilities that ChatGPT lacks, including citing sources through reinforcement learning.