Google announced Tuesday that it’s allowing more people to interact with “Bard,” an artificially intelligent chatbot the company built to counter Microsoft’s early lead in a key technology battleground.
In Bard’s next phase, Google opened a waiting list to use AI tools similar to Microsoft’s ChatGPT technology since it started rolling out on the Bing search engine to much fanfare last month. And last week, Microsoft put more AI-powered technology into its word processing, spreadsheet and slide show programs with a new feature called Copilot.
Until now, Bard was only available to a small group of “trusted testers” selected by Google. The Mountain View, California, company, which is owned by Alphabet Inc., did not say how many people will be given access to Bard in the next step of technology development. Initial applicants will be limited to the US and UK before Google offers Bard in more countries.
Google is treading carefully with the launch of its AI tools, in part because it has more to lose if the technology releases inaccurate information or leads users down dark corridors. That’s because Google’s dominant search engine has become the de facto gateway to the internet for billions of people, raising the risk of a massive backlash that could tarnish its image and damage ad-driven businesses if the technology misbehaves.
Despite its technological pitfalls, Bard still offers “extraordinary benefits” such as “jumpstarting human productivity, creativity and curiosity,” Google said in a blog post that two vice presidents – Sissie Hsiao and Eli Collins – wrote with the help of Bard.
As a precautionary measure, Google limits the number of interactions that can occur between Bard and users – a tactic that Microsoft adopted with ChatGPT after detailed media coverage when the technology compared Associated Press reporters to Hitler and tried to persuade New York. Reporter times to divorce his wife.
Google also provides access to Bard through a separate site from the search engine, which is the basis for digital advertising that generates most of its revenue. In a tacit acknowledgment that Bard may easily deviate into false manufacturing, which is called “hallucination” in technology circles, Google provides a question box connected to the search engine to facilitate users to check the accuracy of the information presented by AI.
Bard made the embarrassing blunder shortly after Google unveiled the tool by clearly displaying the wrong answer to a scientific milestone during a presentation that was supposed to show how smart the technology is. The gaffe sent Alphabet’s shares down nearly 8% in a single day, wiping out about $100 billion in shareholder wealth and underscoring how investors are looking at how Google is handling its transition to AI.