Exploring the Potential of Google’s AI-Powered Search with the Launch of ‘Bard’

Google parent Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) isn’t letting Microsoft (MSFT) steal all the spotlight when it comes to AI. The company announced on Monday that it will be opening up its own ChatGPT competitor, Bard, to a number of trusted users ahead of a public debut in the coming weeks. The move comes just two weeks after Microsoft announced its multi-year, multi-billion dollar investment in ChatGPT developer OpenAI.

Bard by Google is a conversational AI service powered by Alphabet’s Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA). The software aims to provide users with AI-powered answers to their questions that sound like they were written by another human.

An example that Google provided in a press release read, “What new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope can I tell my 9-year-old about?” are billions of years old.”

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said the company will initially release a “lightweight mockup version of LaMDA” that requires less computing power and allows for more feedback from users.

“We will combine external feedback with our own internal testing to ensure that Bard’s responses meet high standards of quality, safety and realism in real-world information,” Pichai said. “We look forward to this testing phase, which will help us continue to learn and improve Bard’s quality and speed.”

Google says it will soon add new AI capabilities to its search product to give users more nuanced answers to their questions. (Image: Google)

While a ChatGPT competitor is certainly intriguing, what’s more interesting is how Google will eventually integrate the technology into Google Search. There has been speculation about how Microsoft might use its investment in OpenAI to bring ChatPGT’s capabilities to the Bing search engine to bolster Google’s 93% share of the global search engine market.

The idea would be to make Bing’s answers more natural, rather than simply providing links or quick answers without much context. The company appears to be sensing the threat, which Google is reportedly calling “Code Red,” and is working to launch its own natural language search feature.

Pichai points to a search query for someone asking Google if it’s easier to learn the guitar or the piano. Normally, search engines wouldn’t be able to provide insight into these kinds of subjective questions, but with its AI improvements, the CEO says, Google search will soon be able to do just that.

“Soon you’ll see AI-powered features in search that distill complex information and multiple perspectives into easy-to-understand formats so you can quickly see the big picture and learn more from the web: whether that’s searching for additional perspectives, like blogs by people who play both piano and guitar, or go deeper into a related topic, like steps to get started as a beginner. These new AI capabilities will be rolling out to Google Search soon,” he said.

The race is on to see which company will be able to capture and keep consumers’ attention. And it could turn the search market as we know it on its head.

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