Google is opening up its own experimental, conversational AI service, and rival to ChatGPT, to early testers with plans to make it more widely available to the public in the coming weeks.
Writing in a blog post CEO of Google and Alphabet, Sundar Pichai said that increasingly, people were turning to Google for deeper insights and understanding.
For example, someone may want to know “is the piano or guitar easier to learn, and how much practice does each need?” In response to this, new AI-powered features in Search will soon be rolled out, allowing users to understand and digest complex information and multiple perspectives more easily.
In this instance, that may involve additional perspectives like blogs from people who play both piano and guitar, or going deeper on a related topic, like steps to get started as a beginner.
“It’s a really exciting time to be working on these technologies as we translate deep research and breakthroughs into products that truly help people. That’s the journey we’ve been on with large language models. Two years ago we unveiled next-generation language and conversation capabilities powered by our Language Model for Dialogue Applications (or LaMDA for short),” Pichai said.
“Bard seeks to combine the breadth of the world’s knowledge with the power, intelligence and creativity of our large language models. It draws on information from the web to provide fresh, high-quality responses. Bard can be an outlet for creativity, and a launchpad for curiosity, helping you to explain new discoveries from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to a 9-year-old, or learn more about the best strikers in football right now, and then get drills to build your skills.”
Google said it is releasing the service initially with its lightweight model version of LaMDA. Since the much smaller model requires significantly less computing power, the company can scale to more users, allowing for more feedback.
“We’ll combine external feedback with our own internal testing to make sure Bard’s responses meet a high bar for quality, safety and groundedness in real-world information. We’re excited for this phase of testing to help us continue to learn and improve Bard’s quality and speed,” Pichai added.
