Google Rolls Out Its AI Chatbot Bard, Permits Access to Limited Users

Giant tech company Google has rolled out its Artificial Intelligence (AI) Chatbot called Bard to limited users to test and address some of the challenges experienced during its first public testing in February.

Only users in the U.K. and the United States that signed up for the company’s waitlist will be granted, the company disclosed this in a blogpost on its website to join a waitlist.

The blogpost reads in part, “Today we are starting to open access to Bard, an early experiment that lets you collaborate with generative AI. This follows our announcements from last week as we continue to bring helpful AI experiences to people, businesses, and communities.

“You can use Bard to boost your productivity, accelerate your ideas and fuel your curiosity. You might ask Bard to give you tips to reach your goal of reading more books this year, explain quantum physics in simple terms, or spark your creativity by outlining a blog post. We have learned a lot so far by testing Bard, and the next critical step in improving it is to get feedback from more people.”

Google which is rolling out Bard with caution has stressed that the chatbot is not in any way a replacement for its search engine, but rather a compliment to search. Currently, Bard is a separate product from Google’s search engine, users cannot interact with Bard from search results.

Like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Bard is a chatbot based on a large language model. Users can interact with it to ask questions and refine the answers with follow-up queries. Bard is powered by a research large language model (LLM), specifically a lightweight and optimized version of LaMDA, and will be updated with newer, more capable models over time. It is grounded in Google’s understanding of quality information.

According to Google, Bard aims to combine the breadth of the world’s knowledge with the power, intelligence, and creativity of its language models. Google further explained that Bard would work well for “NORA” query questions to which there is no right answer.

As with OpenAI ChatGPT, Google has also issued a disclaimer underneath the main text box warning users that “Bard” may display inaccurate or offensive information that doesn’t represent Google’s views.

Investors King understands that Google’s slow rollout of Bard is coming after its rocky journey into Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbot in February this year, after the chatbot shared inaccurate information in a promotional video that wiped out a whopping $100 billion in the market capitalization of Alphabet, Google parent company.

So far, the tech giant has been working tirelessly to ensure that its Chatbot is void of unnecessary errors to maintain its reputation as a search engine king. To avoid any controversies, Google has already issued a disclaimer about how Bard will not always have the correct answer. However, the company has built some guardrails to prevent such errors from being widespread.

Google had revealed that it knows the limitations of the chatbot, and so it wants to be very deliberate at the pace at which it will be rolled out. The tech giant has also revealed that Bard will be closely monitored to make sure it adheres to its own “AI principles” which include avoiding the creation or reinforcement of bias.