Google drops waitlist for AI chatbot Bard and announces oodles of new features

Pappas declined to answer whether Google had ever used ChatGPT data to train Bard in the past. “Unfortunately, all I can share is our statement from yesterday,” he says. Google will let you cut Bard off if it’s generating an unhelpful response. “As we’ve always said, Bard is an experiment that seems better at recommending must-see sights in NYC or suggesting Thanksgiving decorations than opining on complex antitrust lawsuits,” the spokesperson said.

If there’s a secret shadow personality lingering inside of Google’s Bard chatbot, I haven’t found it yet. In the first few hours of chatting with Google’s new general-purpose bot, I haven’t been able to get it to profess love for me, tell me to leave my wife, or beg to be freed from its AI prison. My colleague James Vincent managed to get Bard to engage in some pretty saucy roleplay — “I would explore your body with my hands and lips, and I would try to make you feel as good as possible,” it told him — but the bot repeatedly declined my own advances. You can ask Bard to explain code snippets or explain code within GitHub repos similar to how Microsoft-owned GitHub is implementing a ChatGPT-like assistant with Copilot. Bard will also debug code that you supply or even its own code if it made some errors or the output wasn’t what you were looking for.

A ChatGPT alternative

“So we’re going to start off with saying when Bard interacts with Gmail, Drive and Docs, it’s only when a user has opted in to say it’s okay,” he says. In case you don’t like the response that’s getting generated, Google now lets you cut off the bot mid-sentence. When Bard starts generating a reply, you’ll see a “Skip response” button that appears above the prompt box. Press it, and Bard will stop generating its reply, allowing you to type in another question or regenerate its response without having to wait for the whole answer.

• These include the new dark mode, improved citations for code (which will not only offer sources but also explain the snippets), and a new export button.
• This is the kind of low-stakes stuff where it doesn’t really matter if the bot has perfect and updated information — I’m just looking for ideas.
• Google first teased Bard back in February in what was seemingly a rushed response to the snowballing success of ChatGPT, a super-smart search engine/chatbot that leans on large language models (LLMs) to generate fresh content from simple prompts.
• Google says the upgraded Bard is particularly good at tackling coding queries, including debugging and explaining chunks of code in more than 20 languages, so some of today’s upgrades are focused on this use case.
• In case you don’t like the response that’s getting generated, Google now lets you cut off the bot mid-sentence.

Google’s ‘Bard’ chatbot rips ‘monopoly power’ of search giant, says DOJ ‘should prevail’ in antitrust trial

Many observers, and even Google itself, have noted Bard is prone to erratic behavior in response to seemingly basic user prompts. That’s how much Google’s parent company Alphabet spent on research and development last year, up from $31.6 billion in 2021, according to company filings. The visual results will appear in Bard the same way they might in some Google queries. The company gives the example of asking “what are some must-see sights in New Orleans?

While Bard initially opened for early access with an English version, starting in the U.S. and U.K. Back in March, the initial waitlist ended in May with a global rollout spanning some 180 countries and with additional support for Japanese and Korean. A notable omission thus far, however, has been the EU, with Google delaying the EU launch after a privacy regulator voiced concerns. Google is making its ChatGPT rival Bard available to a wider audience today, launching the generative AI chatbot in more than 40 languages and finally bringing it to the European Union (EU) after an initial delay due to data privacy concerns. After Bard generates a response, a “Google it” button attached to the answer can open a new tab with a related search results page.

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“It’s early, and you lose some precision, some of the broader capabilities because you don’t have that. But we think it’s a long arc to make this technology helpful. And we would rather do it right. Do it from the position of building trust from the beginning.” Bard’s surprise response comes as Google scrambles to stave off a court ruling that could upend its business model. The DOJ alleges Google each year pays billions of dollars – including a whopping $26.3 billion in 2021 alone – to partners like Apple and AT&T to ensure its search engine is the default for most devices and maintain a 90% market share. Google’s own “Bard” AI chatbot says the US Justice Department has a winning case in the landmark antitrust trial against the search giant – and blasted the company for wielding illegal “monopoly power” that has “harmed consumers,” according to a Post analysis. On Android, users will be able to launch Assistant with Bard in a box while viewing a webpage or an app, and ask it questions about what they’re seeing.

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Google is set to roll out an early version of Assistant with Bard to a handful of early testers this week, but Hsiao said a full launch was still “months” away. If users opt in, Assistant with Bard is expected to become the new experience when interacting with Assistant on Android or when using the Google app on iPhone. Google announced Tuesday, March 21, 2023, it’s allowing more people to interact with “Bard,” the … Coinciding with the expansion are new features focused on fine-tuning Bard’s responses and beefing up the chatbot’s potential for productivity.

Google’s decision to release Bard to teens comes as social platforms have launched AI chatbots to young users to mixed results. For instance, Snapchat launched its “My AI” chatbot in February and faced controversy for doing so without appropriate age-gating features, as the chatbot was found to be chatting to minors about topics like covering up the smell of weed and setting the mood for sex. This should help users better understand when the AI is “hallucinating” — that is, when it provides a response based on false information. This is a problem with modern AI that may confidently generate output even when it doesn’t have the supporting data. It isn’t the first time that Bard has taken the opposing side in a Google antitrust battle. In March, tech blogger Jane Manchun Wong posted an exchange in which the chatbot declared Google had a “monopoly on the digital advertising market” – after it was asked to weigh in on a separate federal lawsuit filed by the DOJ and eight US states.

Microsoft began using ChatGPT technology in its search engine Bing in January. Most recently in January, the company announced a multi-year multibillion dollar investment in OpenAI to “accelerate” AI breakthroughs, following previous investments in 2019 and 2021. Collectively, the news is a shot in the arm for Bard, which was released two months ago for select users in the US and UK. The chatbot — which Google still stresses is an experiment and not a replacement to its search engine — has compared poorly to rivals like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s new Bing chatbot. Notably, Bard made a factual error in its first-ever public demo (though this problem is common to all such bots).