Google cautiously launches ChatGPT-like artificial intelligence chatbot, Bard

Editor’s note: On March 21, local time, Google opened limited access to its ChatGPT-like product artificial intelligence chatbot Bard, which is currently limited to some users in the UK and the US. Recently, in the new competition of technology giants in the deployment of artificial intelligence, Google “lost” due to its cautious attitude to OpenAI, which launched ChatGPT, and lost its leading position. The launch of Bard could also be seen as an important step in the company’s attempt to regain lost ground. This article is from the compilation.

For more than three months, Google executives have been following news about an artificially intelligent chatbot from Microsoft and artificial intelligence research firm OpenAI. These projects have also captured the public’s imagination about the potential of artificial intelligence.

However, on March 21, local time, Google also announced that it will launch Bard, an artificial intelligence chatbot. Google has taken a relatively cautious approach and has only given Bard partial access so far. Google executives said in an interview that starting today, users in the United States and the United Kingdom can join the waiting list for access, and access will be opened to more users in these two countries in the future. Beyond that, Google plans to expand Bard to more countries and non-English languages.

Google’s relatively cautious launch of Bard this time is also their first public response to the recent boom in chatbots driven by OpenAI and Microsoft. The purpose is to prove that Google is also capable of providing similar technology. But Google has been relatively cautious compared with other rivals whose products have been criticized for delivering an unpredictable and sometimes untrustworthy technology.

Still, it’s especially important for Google to launch Bard to avoid a threat to Google’s most profitable search engine business. Many in the technology industry believe that Google may have higher potential losses and gains than any other large technology company in artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence can make Google’s series of products more useful, but it may also make other companies. The company snatches Google’s huge Internet search business. Chatbots can immediately respond with complete sentences, and users no longer need to constantly scroll through the search results page to find the answer they want from a series of results like using a search engine.

Google Bard is currently launching as a standalone page, completely separate from its search engine, as a tentative way to roll out new artificial intelligence while retaining one of the tech industry’s most lucrative businesses (search).

However, Aoun, who is now CEO of healthcare startup Forward, also mentioned that Google’s shift to the Bard chatbot may also help it move away from a business model that relies on advertising revenue.

At the end of November last year, OpenAI released the online chat robot ChatGPT, which can answer various questions raised by users, write academic papers, and even talk about almost all topics. Two months later, Microsoft, the company’s main investor, and partner rolled out a similar chatbot feature in its Bing internet search engine, a move that also signaled that the technology could transform the world that Google has dominated for more than two decades. market.

Since December, Google has been racing to launch similar artificial intelligence products. Internally, the company has issued a “code red” alert for ChatGPT’s rollout, making artificial intelligence a core priority for the company. This has also motivated multiple internal teams, including those specializing in AI safety, to work together to accelerate the launch of a range of new products.

What industry experts are eager to know is just how quickly Google can develop new AI technologies, especially given the incredible speed at which OpenAI and Microsoft have released similar products.

“We’re in an unusual time,” said Chirag Dekate, a senior analyst at technology research firm Gartner. The emergence of ChatGPT has inspired many new startups, he said, and it has captured the public’s imagination and prompted greater competition between Google and Microsoft. “Now, the needs of the market have changed, and Google has to change with it,” Decatur added.

Last week, OpenAI tried to up its game with GPT-4, a newer technology. GPT-4 will also allow other companies to incorporate similar AI technologies that power ChatGPT into a variety of products, including business software and e-commerce sites.

After all, like chatbots from OpenAI and Microsoft, it doesn’t always generate trustworthy information, and it can also exhibit bias against women and people of color.

“We’re very aware of these issues. We have to bring them to market responsibly,” said Eli Collins, Google’s vice president of research and development. “Excitement, and the excitement of all users who have experienced generative artificial intelligence.”

Collins and Sissie Hsiao, Google’s vice president of products, said in an interview that the company has yet to figure out how to monetize the chatbot, Bard.

Google announced last week that it would add generative artificial intelligence to productivity apps like Google Docs and Google Sheets, but users would have to pay to use the feature. Its underlying technology will also be sold to companies and software developers looking to launch chatbot products or power new applications.

“This technology is still in the early stages of development,” Sisi Xiao said. “We are also exploring how to integrate these experiences into different products.”

According to The New York Times, Google’s latest announcement is the start of a plan to roll out more than 20 artificial intelligence products and features, including an initiative called “Shopping Try.” -), and a product that can customize the user’s background while recording a YouTube video or using the video recording feature of a Google Pixel smartphone.

The chatbot Bard is not integrated into the Google search engine but is a separate web page with a question-and-answer box. At the bottom of the answers in the Q&A box, there is also a “click to Google it” button. Clicking the button takes the user to a traditional Google search results page on the topic.

Google executives define Bard as a chatbot that can help users compose emails and poems and can target how to engage kids in new hobbies with a creative tool that provides advice on the fly. Google hopes to further refine the chatbot’s capabilities by observing how people use the technology and based on usage and related feedback, Google executives said. Unlike Google’s search engine, though, Bard isn’t primarily designed to provide a reliable source of information.

“We see Bard as a complement to Google Search,” says Sissy Shaw. “We want to be both bold and responsible in terms of innovating with this technology.”