Google launches open access to ChatGPT competitor Bard in US, UK

In April, Google CEO Sundar Pichai admitted some of the company’s AI programs had developed so-called “emergent properties” – such as one strange instance in which a tool gained the ability to translate the Bengali language despite never being “taught” the dialect. “It’s comically embarrassing that Google’s legal arguments are so easily undermined by its very own AI chatbot,” said Kyle Morse, deputy executive director of the Tech Oversight Project, an antitrust watchdog. During the trial, search rivals like Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg testified that such payments have made it all but impossible to chip away at Google’s dominance.

Google opens AI chatbot Bard to the public but warns not every response will be accurate

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 launched an artificial intelligence chatbot called Bard on Tuesday, the company’s response to the AI frenzy dominating big tech companies after the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT—backed by Google’s rival Microsoft—caught the attention of millions last year. Nevertheless, Google’s critics, including the noted Big Tech opponent Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) recently warned that increasingly advanced versions of the AI technology could help it maintain a stranglehold on the online search market for years to come. Bard’s surprise response comes as Google scrambles to stave off a court ruling that could upend its business model. The DOJ alleges Google each year pays billions of dollars – including a whopping $26.3 billion in 2021 alone – to partners like Apple and AT&T to ensure its search engine is the default for most devices and maintain a 90% market share.

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Google announced Tuesday that Bard can now retrieve information from YouTube, Maps, and Google’s Flights and Shopping search features. Also, if granted permission, it can access information from users’ personal content from Gmail, Docs, and Drive to summarize documents. It isn’t the first time that Bard has taken the opposing side in a Google antitrust battle. In March, tech blogger Jane Manchun Wong posted an exchange in which the chatbot declared Google had a “monopoly on the digital advertising market” – after it was asked to weigh in on a separate federal lawsuit filed by the DOJ and eight US states. In case you don’t like the response that’s getting generated, Google now lets you cut off the bot mid-sentence.

This is just weeks after the tech giant’s management reportedly issued a “code red” over the rise of ChatGPT, which has been making waves recently as it’s able to generate written human-like text. The bot reportedly uses Google’s own language technology, called LaMDA, or Language Model for Dialogue Applications. Google has already rolled out AI-assistant features to its Workspace apps and has clarified how it plans to keep weaving AI into its most popular products. If Google is found to have broken the law, the second trial will be held to determine a proper remedy. 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. Google’s own “Bard” AI chatbot says the US Justice Department has a winning case in the landmark antitrust trial against the search giant – and blasted the company for wielding illegal “monopoly power” that has “harmed consumers,” according to a Post analysis.

The result, a new experience Google has named “Assistant with Bard,” sees Google making its existing voice assistant more personalized by effectively placing Bard inside it. Put your brand in front of 10,000+ tech and VC leaders across all three days of Disrupt 2025. Amplify your reach, spark real connections, and lead the innovation charge. Right now, Bard is pretty fast and straightforward to use, but it, in many ways, feels less useful than Bing. It’s even lagging ChatGPT, albeit in a different way — Bard has access to much more updated information, but GPT-4 is able to turn drawings into working code and collaborate in much more detailed ways.

For the extensions that don’t leverage personal data — YouTube, Flights, Hotels and Maps — you’re opted in automatically but you can choose to opt-out. The company says it eventually wants to support third-party services through this same Extensions model, but wants to first test and learn from the feature using its own first-party apps and services. 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. The added features are the result of a new version of Google’s PaLM 2 large language model. Sissie Hsiao, a Google vice president who is the general manager of Assistant and Bard, says the new version has better fine-tuning.

Google is rolling out open access to the chatbot Bard, its answer to ChatGPT’s artificial intelligence computer program. As far as I can tell, it’s also a noticeably worse tool than Bing, at least when it comes to surfacing useful information from around the internet. Bard wrote me a heck of a Taylor Swift-style breakup song about dumping my cat, but it’s not much of a productivity tool.

• If you do end up waiting for the answer, you can still press the “view other drafts” button to see Bard’s alternate responses.
• 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.
• And try as I might, I could not get Bard to get freaky in the chat window.
• But Google claims that Bard is improving in measurable ways, particularly in areas like math and programming.

The company gives the example of asking “what are some must-see sights in New Orleans? ” with the system generating a list of relevant locations — the French Quarter, the Audubon Zoo, etc. — illustrated by the sort of pictures you’d get in a typical Google image search. That’s how much Google’s parent company Alphabet spent on research and development last year, up from $31.6 billion in 2021, according to company filings.

The Verge Daily

Now, Google is adding a lot of new features as well as upgrading Bard to use its new PaLM 2 language model. In a blog post that “Bard did help us write,” vice president of product Sissie Hsiao and vice president of research Eli Collins invited folks to sign up at bard.google.com. Google first teased Bard back in February in what was seemingly a rushed response to the snowballing success of ChatGPT, a super-smart search engine/chatbot that leans on large language models (LLMs) to generate fresh content from simple prompts. ChatGPT is the handiwork of OpenAI, an AI company with heavy backing from Google rival Microsoft.

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