It could really go back to the drawing board for Google’s high-profile launch of the AI-powered tool Bard in Google Search.
Google demonstrated Bard during a live event today (February 8), showing how a new AI-powered chatbot will enhance search capabilities. With Bard, you’ll be able to ask questions in a conversational way, whether that’s having a chatbot outline the pros of electric cars or suggesting a pit stop during a road trip.
But there is one potential problem with having a chatbot help you with your search queries: What if the chatbot doesn’t know what it’s talking about?
Unfortunately, this is an issue Google will have to address after promotional materials featuring Bard in action showed the chatbot sharing incorrect information. Spotted by Reuters (Opens in a new tab), GIF shows Bard providing several answers to a query about the James Webb Space Telescope, including confirmation that the telescope took the first images of a planet outside Earth’s solar system. This must have come as a shock to the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, which achieved the feat first.
Bard is an AI conversational service, powered by LaMDA. Built using our Big Language Models and drawing on information from the web, it’s a launching pad for the intriguing and can help simplify complex topics → https://t.co/fSp531xKy3 pic.twitter.com/JecHXVmt8lFebruary 6, 2023
Well, maybe that’s something you didn’t know off the top of your head. But it would be great if an AI chatbot could share this fact with you.
Not surprisingly, investors reacted completely negatively to Google’s poor initial performance. In reality, CNBC (Opens in a new tab) Reports indicate that the company’s stock fell by 7%. It’s down 7.8% on the day as of this writing.
“This highlights the importance of our rigorous testing process, something we are beginning this week with the Trusted Tester program. We will combine external feedback with our own internal testing to ensure that Bard responses meet high standards for quality, safety, and rooted in real-world information.”
Google spokesperson
To be fair, glitches happen in launch demos all the time, though this particular incident isn’t going to build confidence in Bard’s reliability — especially at a time when OpenAI’s ChatGPT seems well ahead of Google’s efforts to use AI in response. For inquiries and requests. Just yesterday (February 7), Microsoft announced plans to integrate ChatGPT into its Bing search engine, and our initial hands-on with Bing powered by ChatGPT showed some promising results.
It’s still early days for the Bard, which it was Posted by Sundar Pichai of Google (Opens in a new tab) Just a few days ago. Powered by Google’s Linguistic Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA), Bard is currently in the hands of what the company calls “trusted testers” who wake up to fine-tune the chatbot before it’s integrated into Google Search.
“This highlights the importance of our rigorous testing process, something we’re starting this week with the Trusted Tester program,” a Google spokesperson told Reuters when contacted about a cold bug. “We will combine external feedback with our own internal testing to ensure that Bard responses meet high standards for quality, safety, and grounding in real-world information.”
It seems that investors are not in a particularly understanding mood. After the announcement of the Bard’s mistake, shares in Google subsidiary Alphabet fell more than 7%. It may also reflect an overall skepticism about Google Ads and whether it is playing catch-up with Microsoft and ChatGPT.
Bard wasn’t the only AI tool Google focused on during Wednesday’s live event. Google Lens is rolling out a multi-search feature that allows you to search for an image and text at the same time. Also coming to Google Lens — at least on Android devices — is the ability to search photos and videos you come across in a website or app without having to exit that site or app.
Google Maps will add an immersive view feature that uses AR technology for overhead-style views of popular tourist spots, with London, New York and Los Angeles offering the feature. Meanwhile, Google Translate will offer more contextual translation options with descriptions to help decipher things like local idioms.
It all sounds very promising — once Google ensures that all of these features are ready for prime time, of course.
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