Find out what Bard means for developers and end users, and how this news fits into the broader landscape of AI chatbots.
Progress in AI Chatbot technologies have recently dominated discussions in the tech industry. First, it was Microsoft-backed ChatGPT that rocked the internet by announcing its release and potential integration with Microsoft’s Bing search engine. Then came Baidu’s AI chatbot, Ernie bot, which will be integrated into Baidu’s search engine in the coming months. In the wake of these recent developments, Google has decided to respond with its version of an AI chatbot called Bard.
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What is Bard and when will Google release it?
According to Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, Bard is currently undergoing internal testing and will be made public in the coming weeks.
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Bard will be powered by Google’s language model for dialog applications. Like other major language models, LaMDA functions as a deep learning algorithm that can recognize, translate, summarize, predict, and generate content, such as text, codes, or images, based on the knowledge that it extracts huge volumes of data.
Google believes Bard will revamp its search engine capabilities and other product lines once released.
“Soon you’ll see AI-powered features in search that distill complex information and multiple perspectives into easy-to-digest formats, so you can quickly understand the big picture and learn more about the web: whether it’s looking for additional insights, like blogs from people who play both piano and guitar, or digging deeper into a related topic, like steps to get started as a beginner,” Pichai wrote.
Unlike ChatGPT, which allowed the public to access it over the Internet, Google is launching Bard with a lite version that will require fewer computing resources to run before scaling things up. During this phase, Google will aggregate external feedback and merge it with internal test results.
“We will combine external feedback with our own internal testing to ensure that Bard’s responses achieve a high level of quality, security, and grounding in real-world information,” Pichai wrote. “We are excited about this testing phase to help us continue to learn and improve Bard’s quality and speed.”
What Bard Means for Developers and Other End Users
Although Bard is still in its early development stages, Google is confident that the system will be able to compete with ChatGPT and other AI systems in the market.
In addition to helping with search engine capabilities, Bard will bring other features that will help developers develop their apps using Google’s language model.
“Beyond our own products, we believe it’s important to make it easy, safe, and scalable for others to benefit from these advancements by building on our best models,” Pichai wrote. “Next month we will begin onboarding individual developers, creators and businesses so they can try out our Generative Language API, initially powered by LaMDA with a range of patterns to follow. Over time, we intend to build a suite of tools and APIs that will make it easier for others to build more innovative applications with AI. »
For other end users, there was a mixed reaction regarding how AI chatbots will affect the order of things. While some people claim that the advent of these chatbots and their potential integration into search engines will help the creative and marketing industries, others think the opposite.
In the creative and marketing industries, for example, the argument is that chatbots like ChatGPT and Bard will take over some digital marketing jobs because they have demonstrated the ability to generate marketing copy via email and on social networks, including other potentials.
Given these capabilities, there has been a growing adoption of AI tools across several industries. According to 2022 McKinsey Review of the State of AIthe average number of AI capabilities employed in companies doubled between 2018 and 2022.
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Overview of AI chatbot technology and investments
For a while, Google has been quiet about its next big move on AI, allowing other big tech companies like Microsoft and OpenAI to dominate the AI debate in recent months. During this time, Microsoft has shown its commitment to advancing generative AI services through partnerships and financial investments. TechRepublic recently reported that Microsoft expands its partnership with OpenAI with an estimated investment of around $10 billion. This partnership will make Microsoft the exclusive cloud provider for OpenAI research and compute needs.
However, Google is set to shake up that dominance with this latest release. A few days ago he showed his intentions in the AI market by announces a partnership with artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, which is testing its generative AI chatbot that will rival ChatGPT. The deal, worth around $400 million, will give Google a significant stake in Anthropic, as the AI startup will rely on Google Cloud’s GPU and TPU clusters to train, scale and deploy its AI systems.
With these heavy investments in AI chatbot technologies, we are about to witness significant upheaval and competition in the AI industry.
Read next: Microsoft opts for Google with ChatGPT-enabled Bing search And What does Microsoft Bing’s new AI assistant mean for your business? (TechRepublic)