Google has announced it will release its long-awaited Generative AI chatbot, calling it 'Bard' due to its storytelling capabilities.
Based on previous work with LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications), the chatbot has been widely seen as a response to Microsoft's ChatGPT activity since December.
OpenAI's creation has created a hype-cycle buzz on the internet even quicker than Spotify or Instagram. Microsoft has poured billions into resources for the startup to help pay for computing, for which AI requires a considerable amount.
While launching Bard, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, confirmed the amount needed, and said: "Today, the scale of the largest AI computations is doubling every six months, far outpacing Moore’s Law," — referring to the observation that transistors in an integrated circuit double their number every couple of years.
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Google's move to launch Bard has exciting and vast implications for its UC&C technology products, most of which are built on top of its Search tool and Workspace platform. The storytelling angle of Bard focuses on its ability to reproduce text at length in answer to questions, a facility that could be available in chat and message platforms.
Without diving into too much detail, Pichai explained: "Bard can be an outlet for creativity, and a launchpad for curiosity, helping you to explain discoveries from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to a 9-year-old, or learn more about the best strikers in football right now, and then get drills to build your skills."
So far, Generative AI models and answer machines can be shown to contextually rework tweets, songs, blog posts, term papers, poetry and computer code at incredible speed, calling upon internet-wide amounts of information. Some critics have pointed to AI models being limited by not being able to do more recent searches.
However, regarding opportunities, Google currently has over 20 sets of developer tools. Google Developers already uses open source code, has a list of API services, and offers free project hosting. Similarly, Microsoft has embedded itself into open-source research and encouraged third parties to develop apps. Google promises to open up even more for its current gearshift forward with AI.
Pichai commented: "Next month, we’ll start onboarding individual developers, creators and enterprises so they can try our Generative Language API, initially powered by LaMDA with a range of models to follow. Over time, we intend to create a suite of tools and APIs that will make it easy for others to build more innovative applications with AI."
Google and Microsoft AI Rivalry
Microsoft's AI moves and the popularity of ChatGPT has seen Google's management board call a 'Code Red' alert to the workforce to activate its previous years of AI development.
So far, the stumbling blocks for releasing AI tech onto the commercial market have been working out price models (subscription or pay-per-text, for example), the unwieldiness of near-limitless responses creating controversy and the possible lack of discretion for companies and large organisations. Based on the sum of good and harmful internet content information uploading, many including Google, are concerned AI chatbot responses are skewed against women and people of colour.
