Discover GoogleBard: Bard, Google’s AI Chatbot rival for ChatGPT

Google is taking a step toward revolutionalising its services as the company launches GoogleBard or simply Bard, Google’s AI Chatbot rival for ChatGPT. According to information in a blog post published on their official blog page, the company presented its latest advance in generative artificial intelligence, Bard. An AI model capable of maintaining a dialogue with its online users like a human.

Based on the information they provided in the blog post, the service should be more widely available to the general public “in the coming weeks”.

Google‘s LaMDA language model gives rise to a Bard conversational agent. It sounds like Google’s public response to ChatGPT and its search engine.

The Bard conversational agent is currently presented as an experimental conversational AI service powered by the  LaMDA  (Language Model for Dialogue Applications) language model specifically adapted to dialogue.

LaMDA is a language model with up to 137 billion parameters, pre-trained on a dataset of 1,560 billion words (dialogues and public web documents), before being optimized through manually annotated responses.

With  Microsoft’s new Bing with a GPT-4-based chatbot starting to leak and an announcement from the Redmond group fast looming on the horizon,  Google is finally waiting no longer to introduce Bard. This is the formalization of the chatbot codenamed Apprentice Bard.

“Bard’s ambition is to combine the breadth of knowledge of the world with artificial intelligence”, explains Sundar Pichai. “It can help you explain NASA’s latest findings from the James Webb Telescope to a 9-year-old, or tell you about the best strikers in world football today.” This conversation assistant will thus be able to talk to Internet users and answer all their questions, as specific as they are, already welcomes the boss of Google.

Web-connected

ChatGPT’s main limitation is that it doesn’t have access to a recent version of the web: OpenAI’s tool was trained on a model powered by data stopping at the end of 2021. Ask- who won the last football World Cup, and he answers France in 2018. Google, for its part, promises that Bard “is based on information from the Web to provide up-to-date and high-quality answers”.

Bard relies on LaMDA, a computer program designed by Google to generate conversation robots (chatbots), the first version of which was unveiled by the Mountain View (California) group in 2021. LaMDA was talked about in June 2022 when a Google engineer, Blake Lemoine, claimed that artificial intelligence programs were becoming “conscious”. An opinion much criticized in the middle, which considered it absurd or, at best, premature.

With caution for Google

However, Bard is currently only open to so-called trusted testers. The promise is greater availability in the coming weeks. What to limit in the immediate future the type of craze experienced by ChatGPT.

Bard first launches with a slimmed-down version of the LaMDA model. A choice to limit the necessary computing power and allow better responsiveness with a greater number of users. It is also a legitimate caution on the part of Google, which will have to avoid pitfalls in the accuracy of the answers.

During the testing phase, Google will seek to ensure that Bard’s answers ”  achieve a high standard in terms of quality, security, and grounding in real-world information.   Otherwise, and at a time of major deployment, the consequences could be extremely harmful to Google’s image and the trust granted by users.

Bard, Google’s AI Chatbot rival for ChatGPT is Connected to the news

A barely concealed response to ChatGPT, the conversational robot developed by the Open AI company, but also to Microsoft, which has planned to invest 10 billion dollars in this Californian research foundation created by Sam Altman and financed by donations. “These applications will define a new standard of interaction”, assured already last month to Challenges Stéphane Roder, founder of the consulting firm in artificial intelligence, AI Builders.

A further step has just been taken. Because according to Sundar Pichai, Bard will not only be able to answer questions, but also take into account current events. “It relies on information from the web to provide up-to-date, high-quality answers,” says the boss. A major difference with Chat GPT whose knowledge stops in 2021 – gives Bard a clear advantage over its competitor.

A great Google Assistant for research

The purpose is to integrate Bard and other AI-based features into the popular search engine. What’s more, new Generative Language APIs for developers will allow them to create their own AI products.

An example given of Bard’s Google integration is the question: ‘  Which is easier to learn between piano and guitar, and how much time does each take to practice?   The chatbot generates its detailed response in natural language, while regular search engine results with links are displayed below.

 ”  Bard can help you explain NASA ‘s latest discoveries from the James Webb telescope to a 9-year-old, or tell you about the best strikers in world football today, and then offer you specific training to improve yourself,” he adds. Google.

Soon in the Google engine

Because the launch of Bard also responds to an emergency for the group: to integrate more artificial intelligence into its search engine. A feature that should be “deployed soon” by Google, says its CEO. “Internet users usually turn to Google for quick factual answers, like how many keys does a piano have?” Recognizes Sundar Pichai. But “more and more are yearning for more in-depth information and understanding”, he continues, such as helping the Internet user to choose between learning the piano or the guitar.

A sign of the importance given to this product, Google teams in France were only notified at the last minute of this announcement. News that could reverse the showdown initiated by Microsoft in the field of artificial intelligence. Because Google has also planned to release a tool to integrate Bard into other applications (API) and open it up to developers. One more argument to defend its Cloud offer. And shows the Mountain View group has not said its last word in a field it knows well.