Last Updated: September 2024
Google recently launched Google Bard AI chatbot in response to ChatGPT, a conversational AI chatbot that has amazed people already. Google Bard bot is powered by Google’s Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA). It uses a combination of natural language processing and machine learning to simulate real and helpful conversations with humans.
Despite Google’s gigantic AI capabilities, Google Bard delivered factually wrong answers during its launch event, resulting in an around 8% crash in Alphabet’s (Google’s parent company) share price.
Currently, Bard is in the testing phase and Google is inviting trusted testers to get external feedback. It will soon be available for integration with websites, applications, messaging platforms, and other digital platforms.
In this post, we have put together all the latest Google Bard stats and facts you should know.
Table of contents:
- Google Bard – Key Stats and Facts
- What is Google Bard?
- When was Bard Released?
- What was The Wrong Answer by Bard?
- Crash in Alphabet’s Stock Price
- How to Use Google Bard?
- Google Bard vs ChatGPT
Google Bard AI Bot – Key Stats and Facts
| Particulars | Details |
| Developed and owned by | |
| Release date | Feb 6, 2023 |
| Language model | LaMDA |
| Data used to train LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications) |
|
| Leading alternative | ChatGPT |
| Users | Limited Google-trusted testers |
Sources: Google, SEJ
What is Google Bard?
Google Bard is a conversational AI chatbot that is designed to converse with people naturally and give helpful responses to their queries and requests. Bard Google AI chatbot is built on a lightweight version of LaMDA that will allow more people to test it and give feedback.
“Bard will be an outlet for creativity, a launchpad to answer your questions and help clarify new things.”
– Sundar Pichai, CEO at Alphabet and Google.
Unlike Google Assistant, Bard will not just access and read web pages content. Instead, this LaMDA Google AI bot will draw and process the information from the web to provide natural human-like responses. Bard’s key purpose is to augment the Google search by providing a summarized answer to search queries that are much easier to understand compared to just web pages links.
When was Bard Released?
Google released Bard on 6 Feb, 2023, days after Chinese search engine Baidu’s plans to launch an AI bot (like ChatGPT) surfaced.
As per some sources, Google employees are calling the Bard’s launch “rushed” and “botched” across the company’s internal messaging platform. Additionally, employees’ posts targeted the CEO for how the event went.
“Dear Sundar, the Bard launch and the layoffs were rushed, botched, and myopic”
– One post read and was heavily upvoted as per CNBC.
The key reason for this criticism was the wrong answer delivered by the Bard AI bot during the launch event.
Related: Game Industry Revenue and Usage Statistics 2023
What was The Wrong Answer by Google Bard?
During Bard’s demonstration preview on 6 Feb 2023, Google Bard made a mistake answering the question – “What new discoveries from the James Webb Telescope can I tell my 9 year old?”
In Bard’s response, there was a statement that “JWST took the very first pictures of a planet outside our own solar system.” Many Twitter users including Bruce Macintosh, an astronomer and director of the University of California claimed that this statement is factually incorrect. Bruce was reportedly part of the team that took the very first images of exoplanets.
This Bard Google mistake brought up concerns across the internet about AI’s limitation and Google losing dominance in the web search business.
Crash in Alphabet’s Stock Price Due to Bard’s Mistake
As we mentioned above, Google Bard reportedly generated a factual wrong answer in its launch preview. And within hours, Alphabet’s stock price crashed by around 8%, resulting in a $100 billion decline in the company’s market cap.
Source: WSJ, NY Times
How To Use Google Bard?
As of now, Google has made Bard available to limited and trusted testers.
But Google’s CEO in an official introductory post for Bard stated that they are initially launching a small model of Bard with a lightweight version of LaMDA. It will require significantly less computing power, allowing Google to make Bard usage for more users. They want as much external feedback as possible to maintain a high bar of quality and safety.
Additionally, given that ChatGPT has already taken the leap by building 100+ million users already, Google is expected to speed things up and release Bard AI bot soon for more users.
Google Bard vs ChatGPT
Built by OpenAI, ChatGPT was launched three months back on 30 November 2022 and within one week of its launch, ChatGPT achieved the 1 million users mark. The AI model is powered by OpenAI’s latest language model GPT-3 that consists of 175 billion parameters that the bot uses to generate accurate answers.
In fact, due to the amazing response ChatGPT received by people, Google reportedly announced “code-red” fearing it could lose its dominance in internet search.
- Users: ChatGPT has gained over 100 million users while Bard is still under testing.
- Built on: ChatGPT has been built on top of OpenAI’s GPT-3. On the other hand, Bard has been launched on a lightweight version of LaMDA.
- Pricing: ChatGPT is free under research preview, but OpenAI has announced a paid subscription plan priced at $20 per month. While Google Bard is still under testing and no pricing plans have been announced yet.
- Backed by: ChatGPT is primarily backed by Microsoft, the company has recently announced a $10 billion investment in OpenAI. On the other hand, Bard is backed by Google.
So OpenAI’s ChatGPT seems to have taken the initial lead in the race of Google Bard AI vs ChatGPT.
Conclusion
Conversational AI models like Google Bard can do a lot of things that a typical person would have expected from Ai in 2033. It can write essays, help you in coding, business management, and much more.
Google has been a dominant player in search and AI for many years but Bard reportedly didn’t make a great start, many Googlers called it “rushed” and “botched.” ChatGPT’s success seems to be the key reason for this event.
Furthermore, a day after Bard’s launch, Microsoft announced that it is integrating ChatGPT with Bing. ChatGPT has allowed Microsoft to finally challenge big tech companies like Google, Apple, and Amazon with AI.
Google bard has indeed made a rough start but the company is trying to fix things. Sundar Pichai, CEO at Google, has reportedly asked Googlers to spend at least 4-hours a day with Bard and rewrite its bad responses. Let’s see if Bard will be able to overtake competitors like ChatGPT.
