The giant awakens. Enter: BARD, Google's ChatGPT
Joking, Google was never asleep, but most likely OpenAI has had some influence on their Go To Market plans and strategy
Today Google announced Bard, their response to ChatGPT.
Wikipedia says that a Bard is a “professional storyteller, verse-maker, music composer, oral historian, and genealogist, employed by a patron (such as a monarch or chieftain) to commemorate one or more of the patron's ancestors and to praise the patron's own activities.” Not bad, not great.
In a blog post, Google’s CEO introduces Bard as some sort of sidekick to their search engine.
It is presented to us as a solution to combine “the breadth of the world’s knowledge with the power, intelligence, and creativity of large language models.”
Sundar uses the word “fresh” when talking about Bard’s output, so it’s already one-upping ChatGPT. It will arrive in a few weeks, at first using a light version of their generative-language model, LaMDA (Language Models for Dialogue Applications).
I’m expecting it to be really good, like “damn, why have you been keeping this from us, Google?!” good. But we will see.
To be honest, the best part of this announcement from Google is the fact that they are explaining it as “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”. As a father of a very curious and intelligent 8-year-old, I am terrified of Google search engine, even with content filters.
I would pay good money for a version of Google search in the format of an AI-enabled chatbot that is age aware when delivering search results. Yep, I bet someone is working on something like this already, if not, they should.
Anyway, as did Microsoft with GPT3.5 from OpenAi, Google will be infusing all their products with AI technologies and the shift in how humans interact with information will be complete. The .com craziness will be regarded as insignificant in history compared to what is about to happen in the next few months.
In the meantime, Microsoft and OpenAI announced a surprise press conference for tomorrow. I like where this is going.