Google Announces ChatGPT Rival Bard, Releases AI Service to Early Testers

Google-parent Alphabet is planning to launch a chatbot service and more artificial intelligence for its search engine as well as developers, marking a riposte to Microsoft in a rivalry to lead a new wave of technology.

In a blog post on Monday, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said the company is opening a conversational AI service called Bard to test users for feedback, followed by a public release in the coming weeks.

As per the blog, experimental conversational AI service Bard is being powered by LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications), which was unveiled by Google two years ago. The CEO also added about the abilities of Bard, which will be a combination of "power, intelligence and creativity of the company's large language models."

Bard will seek knowledge based on the responses provided by the users, as well as the information available on web. The company is initially rolling out the AI system for testers along with lightweight model version of LaMDA. The focus for now is diverted towards collecting feedback to make the AI system better for future application. 

Bard from Google is Alphabet's competition to OpenAI's ChatGPT, headed by Microsoft. ChatGPT has been in news for becoming the fastest-growing consumer application in history, beating TikTok and Instagram. ChatGPT is estimated to have reached 100 million monthly active users in January, just two months after launch.

ChatGPT has the ability to generate articles, essays, jokes and even poetry quickly when in response to a user's need. OpenAI, a private company backed by Microsoft, made it available to the public for free in late November. The company has rolled out a ChatGPT Plus services to users in US at subscription fee of $20 (nearly Rs. 1,600).

Apart from Bard, Google is also focused on supporting other reliable AI systems through the Google Cloud partnerships. These AI systems include Cohere, C3.ai and Anthropic. It was recently reported that Google has invested almost $400 million (roughly Rs. 3,299 crore) in Anthropic.