ChatGPT isn’t the only generative AI in town. Google has been working on its own AI, titled Bard, and recently announced it’s ready for the next step in its rollout.
Google’s AI chatbot will be made available to select users in the U.S. and U.K., and you can sign up for the waitlist today.
What is Bard?
Bard is Google’s generative AI, similar to ChatGPT. It’s powered by a research large language model (LLM) akin to LaMDA (which was not publicly released, but gained publicity when a researcher claimed it had reached the point of sentience), and will continue to update over time as it’s tested and fine-tuned.
Google’s announcement describes Bard’s large language model as a predictive engine that generates responses to prompts by selecting the words most likely to be used in conversation. Think of it as a more advanced version of Gmail suggesting email replies, or Google Docs suggesting ways to finish a sentence.
Users can ask Bard for things like suggestions, help making lists, an outline for a blog post, or a question about a topic. Bard will then provide a few drafts of answers, which users can select to continue the conversation. Like ChatGPT, Bard maintains the context of the conversation, so users can ask follow-up questions.
Google positions Bard as a way to “boost your productivity, accelerate your ideas, and fuel your curiosity,” which can be used to complement Google Search. Bard also includes a “Google it” button, so users can search for more answers through Google’s search engine. Additionally, Bard uses the internet to keep its information up to date and can cite the sources it uses.
Google’s positioning of Bard makes it clear that it’s intended to assist with creative processes, provide information, and make suggestions, rather than to write entire essays (a major concern among educational institutions).
As Bard develops, Google intends to add new capabilities, including additional languages, coding, and multimodal experiences. Google will be listening to user feedback from this early rollout to guide Bard’s development. The company also has plans to further integrate LLMs into Search in the future.
