The competition in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) market is about to get interesting as Google is set to release its own conversational AI service called Bard.
The service may have come as Google’s response to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which has become a global sensation since its launch in December 2022.
Google said Bard is now open to trusted testers ahead of making it more widely available to the public in the coming weeks.
Google CEO’s explanation: Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, who announced the release of Bard during the company’s earnings call, said AI has been a focus for the company in the last 6 years. According to him, from presenting Transformers, the grandmother of contemporary languages in 2017 to introducing the state-of-the-art big language model, LaMDA, in 2021, Google has continued to put AI at the core of its efforts.
Explaining Google’s journey leading up to the birth of Bard, Pichai said:
- “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.
- “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.
- “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 emphasized that AI is the most profound technology Google is working on today.
- “Whether it’s helping doctors detect diseases earlier or enabling people to access information in their own language, AI helps people, businesses, and communities unlock their potential. And it opens up new opportunities that could significantly improve billions of lives.
- That’s why we re-oriented the company around AI six years ago, and why we see it as the most important way we can deliver on our mission: to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” he said.
In case you missed it: Recall that Google last week released a search trends report, which revealed that more people globally, including in Nigeria, are now showing more interest in AI.
