Google Introduces Bard To Rival ChatGPT

Google has revealed plans to take on Microsoft-backed conversational AI chatbot ChatGPT with its own platform Bard which it says it will release in the coming weeks.

Sundar Pichai, Google and Alphabet CEO announced in a blogpost that the tech giant is opening Bard for testers ahead of rolling it out to the wider public. “Two years ago, we unveiled next-generation language and conversation capabilities powered by our Language Model for Dialogue Applications (or LaMDA for short). We’ve been working on an experimental conversational AI service, powered by LaMDA, that we’re calling Bard. And today, we’re taking another step forward by opening it up to trusted testers ahead of making it more widely available to the public in the coming weeks.”

Unlike ChatGPT which relies on the information that it has already been fed, Bard will draw information from the web to respond to queries from its users.

“It draws on information from the web to provide fresh, high-quality responses. 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,” he said.

Google said it is releasing BARD initially with its lightweight model version of LaMDA which requires significantly less computing power, enabling it to scale to more users, allowing for more feedback.

Whether BARD will be popular like ChatGPT, is what remains to be seen.  ChatGPT, which was released last year in November surpassed one million users within the first week of its launch. ChatGPT receives approximately 10 million daily queries and has so far been used by over 100 million people worldwide.