Google unveils Bard, a conveniently timed rival to ChatGPT

Mere days after OpenAI officially launched ChatGPT Plus, Google has unveiled its very own rival: Google Bard.

Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai made the announcement in a blog post on Tuesday morning.

“Two years ago we unveiled next-generation language and conversation capabilities powered by our Language Model for Dialogue Applications (or LaMDA for short),” Pichai said in the post.

“We’ve been working on an experimental conversational AI service, powered by LaMDA, that we’re calling Bard.”

According to Pichai, Bard is now available to “trusted testers” but will be more widely available to the general public within a few weeks.

Judging by the screenshots from the post, Bard is incredibly similar to OpenAI. Pichai said future users will be able to utilise the engine for everyday queries and explanations.

“Bard can be an outlet for creativity, and a launchpad for curiosity, helping you to explain new 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,” Pichai explained.

And similar to ChatGPT, “Bard seeks to combine the breadth of the world’s knowledge with the power, intelligence and creativity of our large language models. It draws on information from the web to provide fresh, high-quality responses”.

Google Bard timing is certainly interesting

If the announcement of Google Bard feels a bit rushed, it might have something to do with the popularity of ChatGPT.

Launched at the end of November 2022, it had more than 1 million users in just five days and began experiencing server overload problems within weeks. Even now the AI can only be accessed at certain times due to the exponential amount of users trying to access it.

Microsoft is even reported to be investing US$10 billion ($14 billion) into OpenAI, giving it a 49% stake in the company, which is currently being valued at US$29 billion ($42 billion).

The tech giant will also be including ChatGPT in its Bing search engine in the future, news which was leaked on Twitter in early February.

And just this week OpenAI made a formal announcement about a paid version of the platform (which it teased in January) called ChatGPT Plus. This US$20 a month subscription will offer additional features as well as stable access to the platform.

So it’s unsurprising that Google may have been feeling the pressure to speed up the release of Bard and dominate the AI conversation.

It even utilised the blog post to reiterate how it is injecting AI into its other products, like Search.

Image: Google Blog

“Soon, you’ll see AI-powered features in Search that distill complex information and multiple perspectives into easy-to-digest formats, so you can quickly understand the big picture and learn more from the web: whether that’s seeking out additional perspectives, like blogs from people who play both piano and guitar, or going deeper on a related topic, like steps to get started as a beginner,” Pichai said.

But despite this seemingly rushed release, Google is being careful to reiterate the company’s ‘safe’ approach to AI.

“We’ll combine external feedback with our own internal testing to make sure Bard’s responses meet a high bar for quality, safety and groundedness in real-world information,” Pichai added.

“We’re excited for this phase of testing to help us continue to learn and improve Bard’s quality and speed.”