Google's recent annual I/O 2023 developer conference was heavily loaded with important announcements referring to the Artificial Intelligence. The technology giant showed different improvements linked to artificial intelligence applied to its services and applications, putting special interest in its large-scale text generator (LLM), PaLM 2 and updated Bard, the experimental conversational chatbot of Google. To deeply understand the advanced abilities of Google's AI chatbot, it is vital to retrace the path of the Bard and understand its fundamental principles.
The growth of Bard, the creation of Google
Bard was introduced to the market during February, and with this launch, Google set the standard in conversational chatbots based on Artificial Intelligence, being similar to the famous ChatGPT from OpenAI. Initially, Bard had a compact version of the text generator from Google for dialog applications, known as LaMDA. This AI chatbot was designed with the purpose of interacting humanly with users, generating ideas, engaging in conversations, writing essays and code, and even being useful in solving mathematical problems.
However, the first version of the Bard was criticized for its limited capacity and for presenting inaccuracies in information. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, accepted these limitations and made clear that they were deliberate as part of the plan to improve Bard's skills through more powerful LLMs.
Fast forward to the Google I/O 2023 conference, Google kept its promise and decided to update Bard with the latest version of the text generator parallel, PaLM 2. This change is a big jump compared to LaMDA, as it boosts Bard's abilities.
Bard was initially only available to a small group of trusted reviewers in the United States and the United Kingdom. Although a waiting list has been created since March 2023, Bard has remained inaccessible to the general public. However, today Google has extended access to Bard to more than 180 countries and territories. Although currently only available in English, Google plans to expand Bard's language support to Japanese and Korean, and then to 40 additional languages in the near future.
The Discovery of the Bard's enhanced abilities
Thanks to the implementation of PaLM 2, Bard has seen considerable improvements in its functionality. The chatbot now shows superiority in mathematics, logic and reasoning. It can generate, explain and debug code in more than 20 programming languages, providing support to developers in their programming tasks.
The latest Bard update also provides a more visual and interactive user experience. Users can now provide images to Bard, who can subsequently respond with relevant information, leveraging Google tools like Google Lens. Additionally, Bard has the ability to generate humorous subtitles, further enhancing user interaction.
Not only can Bard's responses be exported directly to Gmail and Google Docs, but the chatbot can also browse the web for image searches, access knowledge graphs for relevant information, and use Google Maps for location-related queries. . The integration with Google Sheets makes it even more useful.
In an effort to expand its collaboration capabilities, Google plans to integrate Bard with external services such as Adobe Firefly. This integration will allow users to generate new images from text messages and incorporate them into the edit table. Google is also building ties between Bard and other partners such as Kayak, OpenTable, ZipRecruiter, Instacart, Wolfram and Khan Academy.
The Battle between Bard and ChatGPT: The New Rivalry in AI
With the announcement of the updated Bard chatbot, Google intends to challenge the supremacy of OpenAI's ChatGPT. One of Google's strategic moves was the inclusion of a lightweight version called "Gecko," designed for integration with smartphones, allowing users to run it locally on their Android devices. In addition to Gecko, there are other more powerful versions such as Otter, Bison and Unicorn.
The future of chatbots
ChatGPT, given its first-mover advantage, has become a benchmark in technology and has a dedicated user base accustomed to its features. However, considering that Bard is offered for free compared to the GPT4-powered version of ChatGPT that is priced at $20 per month, Google's chatbot has the upper hand.
Both OpenAI and Google are working to improve their chatbots, with plans to make them multimodal and plugin-friendly. As the AI chatbot industry continues to evolve, tech giants like Google, Microsoft, and Meta are in a fierce race to deliver the most innovative and powerful offerings.
Although OpenAI's ChatGPT had a head start with its launch in September 2022, Google is quickly closing the gap. With its strategic improvements and extensive global reach, Bard is becoming a real competition for ChatGPT's dominance.
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