Google’s Bard AI may be powerful enough to worry ChatGPT

The tool is being made available in a very limited way initially, both in terms of its capabilities and who can use it, but we’re only weeks away from a wider launch. Google announced Bard’s existence less than two weeks after Microsoft disclosed it’s pouring billions of dollars into OpenAI, the San Francisco-based maker of ChatGPT and other tools that can write readable text and generate new images. Powered by the latest Llama 4 model, the app is designed to “get to know you” using the conversations you have and information from your public Meta profiles. It’s designed to work primarily with voice, and Meta says it has improved responses to feel more personal and conversational. There’s experimental voice tech included too, which you can toggle on and off to test — the difference is that apparently, full-duplex speech technology generates audio directly, rather than reading written responses.

Bard has been trained to recognize topics that are inappropriate for teens and has guardrails that are designed to help prevent unsafe content, such as illegal or age-gated substances, from appearing in its responses to teens. ChatGPT is, at the moment, a free service anyone can use to input queries and commands that the conversational AI will then respond to in a strikingly realistic fashion. You can, for example, tell ChatGPT to write you a rap song about Santa, and only seconds later you will have a fully generated piece.

Google announces new AI program named Bard, in wake of viral ChatGPT

He has authored over 3,500 articles for PCWorld alone, covering PC microprocessors, peripherals, and Microsoft Windows, among other topics. Mark has written for publications including PC Magazine, Byte, eWEEK, Popular Science and Electronic Buyers’ News, where he shared a Jesse H. Neal Award for breaking news. He recently handed over a collection of several dozen Thunderbolt docks and USB-C hubs because his office simply has no more room. Today’s announcement comes a few weeks after Google opened up its generative AI search experience to teenagers. The AI-powered search experience, also known as SGE (Search Generative Experience), introduces a conversational mode to Google Search where you can ask Google questions about a topic in a conversational manner. Google is opening up access to the chatbot with some guardrails in place to protect users.

Enhance your presentations with AI-generated images

(Both run at up to 120Hz, another fact Bard left out.) When we asked it a second time, it didn’t even distinguish between the inner and outer display, simply stating that it has a 7.6-inch foldable display with a resolution of 1920×1080. Instead, Google is making those responses more immersive with visuals, which look like a vertically-scrolling carousel that offers a better idea of what users are reading about. Bard will also offer the flexibility of making things work the other way around, which means your prompts can now include text and images. Google notes that Bard is also a useful learning tool, as it allows teens to dig deeper into topics and help them better understand complex concepts.

Probably the biggest difference between Bard and Bing AI so far is the fact that Google includes an easy way to see alternative responses within the conversation. You can click the dropdown arrow next to “View other drafts” at the top left of each chat bubble and see some other suggestions. With Bing AI, you’ll have to either hit Chat or scroll up from search results to get to the conversation page, whereas you don’t have to do that for the Bard website. Microsoft has a broom icon to the left of the input bar to clear the slate and start a new topic, while Google has a column on the left with options for “Reset chat,” “Bard Activity,” “FAQ” and “Help & Support.” This is powered by Google Lens, which is able to identify objects within pictures.

Like we saw in the screenshots Google provided with today’s announcement, the interface here is very similar to Bing AI in that there is a wide text input at the bottom of the screen and a dialogue-based layout. But there are a few key differences between Google’s and Microsoft’s offerings. Matthew Guzdial, an assistant computer science professor at the University of Alberta, says evaluation data can still influence an AI model. Check out Google Map’s time-traveling feature and why you may want to blur your home on Google Maps. You can delete individual questions or prevent Bard from collecting any of your activity. Bloomberg says that today, AI ethics reviews are “almost entirely voluntary” at Google.

• Notably, Bard capabilities will soon be available via browser extensions, like OpenAI selling ChatGPT plug-ins and APIs to commercial partners like Expedia, Instacart, and Klarna.
• OpenAI first announced this feature for ChatGPT earlier this year, with example use cases of using the bot to book a restaurant through OpenTable or order a grocery delivery through Instacart.
• However, like ChatGPT, Google’s AI technology isn’t fully there yet — responses may be inaccurate or even offensive, according to Google.
• Google has just announced that its new “experimental conversational AI service” called Bard has now entered the testing phase.

The jury is out on whether or not an AI-powered pop star will knock Taylor Swift out of the charts any time soon. Google’s AI contribution to its slides tool is arguably the most unique of the bunch. You can use a generative AI model to add vivid images to the presentations you are working on. Once you’re in the beta, a new option has been added to the Insert menu under the Image command. Clicking on Help Me Visualize will launch a prompt box that you can use to create unique images. Those images can then be enhanced and tweaked with further prompts and options.

• It’s designed to work primarily with voice, and Meta says it has improved responses to feel more personal and conversational.
• Ready or not, the AI revolution is upon us, and with it comes the potential to drastically change the way humans share and acquire information.
• You can ask it to write an email to customer service for getting a refund or plan your six-person vacation to Spain.
• We used Google Bard for our tests, not Google Search, but with the same AI eventually underlying both, we think the results are worth highlighting.

We Tried Google’s New AI Tools, Here’s What We Learned

The rollout of each program to testers is also gradual, so getting an invite for one may not mean you immediately have access to all of them. We’ve had a chance to spend some time with several of these offerings — here’s what you can expect from Google’s current suite of AI tools. Well, it turns out the future is now and some of Google’s AI efforts are accessible to the general public. There is, of course, Bard, which is currently in the open beta phase and can be accessed by anyone. Beyond that, however, there is a whole suite of tools that Google seems to have christened Duet AI.

Or at least it’s not yet smart enough to replace a personal trainer (nor is it meant to). Because I’ve grown used to Bing AI, which displays animated text explaining what the system is doing and searching for, the absence of this on Bard was surprising. After entering my query, all I saw was the Bard icon sort of twinkling as I waited for a response, which made it seem like Google was taking longer to think. For “leg raises,” Bard’s description is “Lie on your back with your knees bent and your feet flat on the ground. Place your hands behind your head and raise your legs up towards the ceiling.” That’s confusing at best and inaccurate at worst. Google’s first search result for “leg raises” is a video and near the top are several diagrams that all do not match what Bard described. The top text-based article for that query is from The New York Times and much more clearly states what the exercise is.