Bard, a ChatGPT competitor by Google, will soon be available for public testing

Google has announced the launch of Bard, its AI-powered chatbot meant to rival OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Bard is an experimental service that will be available for public testing in the coming weeks. This comes even as Google is preparing to host an AI event on 8th February, 2023.

Google is using its LaMDA technology to power Bard, which is the company’s Language Model for Dialogue applications. LaMDA was previously in the news because a Google engineer thought the chatbot was sentient. The chatbot can simplify complex topics such as understanding the James Webb Space Telescope.

Google is taking a slightly more open approach with the chatbot, giving access to more users. CEO Sundar Pichai said that Bard requires significantly less computing power compared to other AI services, enabling it to scale to more users.

Google’s AI event comes even as Microsoft has announced a surprise event on AI in partnership with OpenAI. Microsoft is expected to announce how it plans to integrate ChatGPT into its search engine Bing, which could pose more of a headache to Google Search business as well.

Pichai’s blog post also made it clear that Google plans to integrate AI-powered features in Search. He said that people often require deeper insights and understanding to understand topics that don’t have one right answer. AI can “synthesize insights” on such topics. He added that Google will add “AI-powered features in Search that distill complex information and multiple perspectives into easy-to-digest formats so you can quickly understand the big picture and learn more from the web.” 

The potential implications of AI-powered features in search are still not clear, and Google will reveal more details at its AI event. It remains to be seen how this will impact traffic for other websites and blogs, if Google’s AI-feature is giving all the detailed answers.