Google Tests New AI Chatbot ‘Apprentice Bard’ Amid ChatGPT Buzz: CNBC

Much like Bing’s chatbot, Bard is powered by a research large language model, which Google describes as a “prediction engine” that generates responses by selecting words it believes are likely to come next. Once or twice in the blog post, you get a sense that Pichai is perhaps frustrated with OpenAI’s prominence. While never name checking OpenAI or ChatGPT directly, he links to Google’s Transformer research project, calling it “field-defining” and “the basis of many of the generative AI applications you’re starting to see today,” which is entirely true. The “T” in ChatGPT and GPT-3 stands for Transformer; both rely heavily on research published by Google’s AI teams.

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When Google announced its intention to launch a chatbot last month, Bard incorrectly answered a question during a promotional video, Reuters reported. The mistake scared some investors and coincided with a rout for the share price of Google’s parent company Alphabet, erasing $100 billion from Alphabet’s market value. Google is opening up access to Bard, its conversational AI tool, to teens in most countries around the world. Teens who meet the minimum age requirement to manage their own Google Account will be able to access the chatbot in English, with support for more languages to come in the future. The expanded launch comes with “safety features and guardrails” to protect teens, Google says.

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• Potential outcomes, according to experts, include the implementation of so-called a “choice screen” for users, a forced discontinuation of business practices or even a breakup of the company.
• If you’re interested in getting your hands on this early version of Bard, we’ll show you how to join the waitlist right now and give you a glimpse into using the AI chatbot.
• It’s a sizable addition, but it’s notable that Google is just keeping feature parity with its rivals.
• Google will let you cut Bard off if it’s generating an unhelpful response.
• Google is rolling out open access to the chatbot Bard, its answer to ChatGPT’s artificial intelligence computer program.
• At the bottom of the answer, you can rate the answer with a thumbs up or thumbs down, restart the conversation or click on a “Google It” button to switch to Google’s search engine.

But chances are you won’t be able to access the product right away as the company is starting with a limited public rollout. In its announcement, Google was careful to acknowledge that large language models (LLMs) like LaMDA aren’t perfect and that mistakes happen. « For instance, because they learn from a wide range of information that reflects real-world biases and stereotypes, those sometimes show up in their outputs, » Hsiao and Collins wrote. Google is opening up access to the chatbot with some guardrails in place to protect users. Bard has been trained to recognize topics that are inappropriate for teens and has guardrails that are designed to help prevent unsafe content, such as illegal or age-gated substances, from appearing in its responses to teens.

Microsoft on Tuesday announced that it would bring Bing Image Creator – a tool that uses AI to turn text prompts into images –  to the new AI-powered Bing and Edge preview. The technology is powered by an advanced version of the DALL-E model from OpenAI. In the blog post announcing Bard, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai writes that Google has been developing an “experimental conversational AI service” powered by its Language Model for Dialogue Applications or LaMDA. Like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Bing chatbot, Bard is a chatbot based on a large language model.

When Google first unveiled Bard last month, there wasn’t much to see other than a lengthy blog post written by Google CEO Sundar Pichai. The model used in Bard is based on Google’s own LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications) — the company is using a lightweight and optimized version of LaMDA. Google just announced that the company is releasing its ChatGPT competitor Bard.

Google’s Bard chatbot finally launches in the EU, now supports more than 40 languages

Google enacted a « code red » – an internal signal to get all hands on deck – and founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page have even weighed in on decisions around Bard and other AI products Google has planned, according to people familiar with the matter. Google will roll out access in phases, so not everyone will get to use Bard right away. The spokesperson said that the company plans to roll out Bard to other territories and languages too. “What is still far from clear is if there is an adverse ruling, what kind of changes to the search market structure the judge thinks might solve the monopoly issue,” the analysts said.

Google’s ‘Bard’ chatbot rips ‘monopoly power’ of search giant, says DOJ ‘should prevail’ in antitrust trial

It’s a sizable addition, but it’s notable that Google is just keeping feature parity with its rivals. Microsoft added AI image generation powered by OpenAI’s DALL-E system to Bing in March, while both OpenAI and Microsoft have been exploring how to integrate chatbots with the wider web. OpenAI first announced this feature for ChatGPT earlier this year, with example use cases of using the bot to book a restaurant through OpenTable or order a grocery delivery through Instacart. Google says the upgraded Bard is particularly good at tackling coding queries, including debugging and explaining chunks of code in more than 20 languages, so some of today’s upgrades are focused on this use case. These include the new dark mode, improved citations for code (which will not only offer sources but also explain the snippets), and a new export button. This can already be used to send code to Google’s Colab platform but will now also work with another browser-based IDE, Replit (starting with Python queries).

Google is making its ChatGPT rival Bard available to a wider audience today, launching the generative AI chatbot in more than 40 languages and finally bringing it to the European Union (EU) after an initial delay due to data privacy concerns. The initial version will be limited to text – it won’t yet respond to images or audio – and you won’t be able to use it for coding, but Google says that these features will arrive in due course. Google is emphasizing that this is an early experiment and says that Bard will run on an « efficient and optimized » version of LaMDA, the large language model that underpins the tool. Users will be met with a warning that « Bard will not always get it right » when they open it.

What’s really dumb about Bard in these situations, though, is that it doesn’t provide links to anything unless it’s quoting from a source directly. (The only time I’ve seen citations so far was in the cookie recipe.) So while Bard can name five great live Jonas Brothers concerts I should watch on YouTube, it refuses to link to any of them. If you don’t like the answer to your question, scroll down to the bottom of the page and use the thumbs down button, indicating a bad response. You can use the three-dot menu button on the bottom-right to copy the response to your clipboard, to paste elsewhere.

If you’re unsure what to enter into the AI chatbot, there are a number of preselected questions you can choose, such as, « Draft a packing list for my weekend fishing and camping trip. » Today’s announcement comes a few weeks after Google opened up its generative AI search experience to teenagers. The AI-powered search experience, also known as SGE (Search Generative Experience), introduces a conversational mode to Google Search where you can ask Google questions about a topic in a conversational manner. Google says Bard will often answer a prompt with a number of drafts, allowing users to pick the best starting point for their conversation with the chatbot. Google is rolling out open access to the chatbot Bard, its answer to ChatGPT’s artificial intelligence computer program.