All You Need to Know About Google’s AI Chatbot “Bard”

Bard is Google’s soon-to-be-launched AI search assistant that will work in the background of search queries to provide in-depth information on users’ results.

Bard was rolled out by the tech giant earlier this month, in response to OpenAI Chatbot ChatGPT which is currently the rave of the moment, that has amassed over 1 million users daily.

Bard is reported to be Google’s first shot at ChatGPT as it seeks to compete with the chatbot, as well as possibly displace it.

What Powers Bard?

Bard is powered by a language model to enable it to converse with humans efficiently. The Chatbot uses a language model for dialogue applications (LaMDA) as its model.

LaMDA is a type of Large Language Model (LLM), which are software algorithms trained on huge amounts of data, usually measured in terabytes.

Although they are most well known as the software that powers chatbots, LLMs can also be used to do things such as scanning scientific databases to learn about the structure of medicines.

How Does Bard Work?

Google CEO Sundar Pichai in a blog post, disclosed that Bard draws information from the web to provide fresh and high-quality responses. Like ChatGPT, Google’s Bard will initially only answer text prompts with its written replies.

He further disclosed that the AI chatbot can be an outlet for creativity and a launchpad for curiosity, which will help users to explain different discoveries or get in-depth knowledge about certain information.

The company further added that Bard will also let users do things like “plan a friend’s baby shower”, “compare two Oscar-nominated movies, or “get lunch ideas based on what’s in your fridge”.

When Will Bard be Released?

Google has revealed that Bard will be rolled out in the coming weeks, which will come on a lightweight model version of LaMDA, noting that this will enable it to scale the chatbot to more people as the much smaller model requires significantly less computing power.

Google will open up the conversation technology to trusted testers ahead of making it more widely available to the public.

The tech giant further disclosed that the initial launch of Bard will be in a testing phase, as it seeks to combine its external feedback with its internal testing, noting that this was necessary as chatbots have shown a propensity for negative traits that include everything from bias to powering cyberattacks.

Google has assured users that soon they will see AI-powered features in search that will distill complex information and multiple perspectives in easy-to-digest formats, to enable them to learn more from the web, Investors King understands.