Heating up the AI competition, Google has introduced Bard, an experimental conversational AI service powered by LaMDA, which draws on information from the web to provide fresh, high-quality responses.
Poised to rival OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Bard will combine the breadth of the world’s knowledge with the power, intelligence and creativity of Google’s large language models.
To make sure Bard’s responses meet a high bar for quality, safety, and groundedness in real-world information, Google will merge external feedbacks with its own internal testing. The company will be rolling out AI-powered features in Search to distill complex information and multiple perspectives into easy-to-digest formats, so users can quickly understand the big picture and learn more from the web.
“And it’s just the beginning more to come in all of these areas in the weeks and months ahead,” Google CEO, Sundar Pichai said.
Following Bard’s rollout, the company also intends to remain bold with its innovation, whether in applying AI to radically transform its own products or making these powerful tools available to others.
“This is an interesting business strategy,” architect and investor, Dmitriy Rogatkin said in a LinkedIn submission. “Google obviously had all these technologies ready. But why put it on hold till a competitor arrive?”
In his opinion, business strategist and Tedx speaker, Emmanuels Magaya believes Google’s AI product wouldn’t have received as much attention as they already dominate that space.
“The narrative had to be one where people speculate that ChatGPT will bring Google down and that misconception alone can work to Google’s advantage,” he said.
ADMARP President, Stanislaus Martins in his projections for AI and Search in 2023 had actually predicted that Google and other search players already have AI technologies that could rival ChatGPT in development. He also expected that ChatGPT would eventually offer a paid version and introduce other monetization methods, such as advertising and a paid API – which meant that OpenAI will give businesses of all sizes a way to plug into ChatGPT, enabling them to build solutions that could take search to a whole new level according to Martins.
Identifying it to be competitive equalization in the AI landscape, Emmanuel Odileke thinks if the AI capabilities of Google and Microsoft do not outmatch each other, it simply means they may hardly gain or lose loyal customers but attract new users who see utility and or value in their respective AI technology capabilities driven by curiosity and opportunity.
He said: “The gains to Google and Microsoft is remaining relevant in the market, attracting new users, and probably consolidating on their continued growth opportunities.”
Author and country manager, John Mc Keown says ‘Bard does not need to be super-great.’ – though much depends on how both great and good enough are measured.
“Though Bard may find that its success may lie, not in flowery composition but in the summoning of empirical absolutes. Human beings, in the main do not need courses in diplomacy, so caveat replies flexing though ‘althoughs’ and ‘howevers’ are surplus to what is required. Let the Bard bring as answers, a singularity of facts.”
Meanwhile, the newly introduced model is winning the name game, and professionals on LinkedIn are having a filled day.
Bennet Reiners, specialist recruiting, DeepL SE said: “I prefer ‘Bard’. It works way better for Robot-Doomsday movies. ‘Bard took over mankind’ sounds way cooler than ‘ChatGPT conquered the planet’. The next Avengers enemy could be named Bard. ChatGPT sounds like someone having a hiccup. And you cannot turn it into a verb like ‘just google it’, ‘just bard it’, ‘just GPT it’ (hiccup again).
For software engineer, Justin Wallace, not only is Bard easy to say and remember, it also tells a story on its own.
“ChatGPT on the other hand is hard to remember and only makes sense to engineers.”
Rodney Browne, a developer and innovator said he always thought ChatGPT was “clunky” for a product name.
“..to the extent I often hear people referring to it as ChatGBT, as well as seeing transcripts with the B spelling event when the person said “P”. With four syllables ChatGPT is a mouthful compared to other product names.”
