Google launches open access to ChatGPT competitor Bard in US, UK

“We are pretty excited about taking this step toward building trust with language models,” notes Krawczyk. “Of course, we certainly want to be transparent when we’re not confident or even when we make a mistake,” he says. The feature will also help the AI to improve as it learns what it gets wrong from user feedback and then uses that to create a better model. Coinciding with the expansion are new features focused on fine-tuning Bard’s responses and beefing up the chatbot’s potential for productivity. Some were telegraphed and previewed in early May, but today marks their broad rollout. 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.

How Google Bard works

Putting some of Google’s machine learning capabilities to work for our users is a clear differentiator, and our users are really excited about that,” they added. At Google I/O this year, Google quietly introduced a new chatbot analytics platform called Chatbase, a project developed within the company’s internal R&D incubator, Area 120. Today, that platform is being publicly launched to all, after testing with hundreds of early adopters including Ticketmaster, HBO, Keller Williams, Viber, and others. “We increased query volume by 35% for a popular stickers bot by optimizing queries with high exit rates,” the company said, in a statement shared by Google.

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“We’ve said that we’re exploring and experimenting with new types of partnerships and product experiences, but we aren’t sharing details about specific plans or conversations at this time,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement. Rakuten-owned Viber, which has over 900 million users in 193 countries, detailed Chatbase’s success with a stickers bot it runs. The internet giant also introduced a swathe of new features to Bard, though some are only available in English at first. Google’s lawyers kicked off their defense late last month, with Pichai among those called to take the stand. The trial is expected to conclude in late November, though Judge Amit Mehta is not expected to issue a ruling on whether Google broke antitrust law until early next year.

Bard uses natural language processing and machine learning to generate responses in real time. You can ask it to write an email to customer service for getting a refund or plan your six-person vacation to Spain. However, like ChatGPT, Google’s AI technology isn’t fully there yet — responses may be inaccurate or even offensive, according to Google. Another new feature updates the “Google it” button in Bard to double-check the chatbot’s response — an improvement that Google says taps into work from Google Research and DeepMind. When you tap the “G” icon, every sentence that Bard has written is validated against Google search to see if there’s content on the web to substantiate the answer.

• Microsoft on Tuesday announced that it would bring Bing Image Creator – a tool that uses AI to turn text prompts into images –  to the new AI-powered Bing and Edge preview.
• You can also use this as a starting point for your own ideas, says Google.
• Next, tap or click the blue Join waitlist button, and then hit Yes, I’m in to confirm you’d like to join.
• If you’re interested in getting your hands on this early version of Bard, we’ll show you how to join the waitlist right now and give you a glimpse into using the AI chatbot.

Want to Try Google’s New AI Chatbot? Here’s How to Sign Up for Bard

“We’ve learned a lot so far by testing Bard, and the next critical step in improving it is to get feedback from more people,” the Google blog post reads. The company said it will continue to improve the chatbot and add capabilities, such as going beyond text responses to other mediums like images, audio or video. Gehring said he had no knowledge of Google’s latest talks with publishers. The idea behind Chatbase’s cloud service is to offer tools to more easily analyze and optimize chatbots. This includes giving bot builders the ability to understand what works to increase customer conversions, improve the bot’s accuracy, and create a better user experience. And that’s why access to Bard is currently limited, so early testers can use the chatbot, provide feedback to developers and help Google improve the AI technology.

Google’s chatbot analytics platform Chatbase launches to public

Google also plans to begin incorporating LaMDA and other artificial intelligence advancements into its dominant search engine to provide more helpful answers to the increasingly complicated questions being posed by its billion of users. Without providing a specific timeline, Pichai indicated the artificial intelligence tools will be deployed in Google’s search soon. Silicon Valley and the media industry have been at odds over tech companies’ use of news content to build AI programs, with publishers worried it will further erode their relationship with readers. In late 2023, the New York Times sued OpenAI, alleging that the startup and its largest investor, Microsoft Corp., relied on copyrighted articles to train the popular ChatGPT chatbot and other artificial intelligence features. Many publishers depend on the search engine for traffic when news breaks. Yet industry leaders have cried foul about the tech giant’s use of their content in products such as Google News, which displays headlines and short snippets of articles.

Across a number of industries, including banking, retail and software. During the trial, search rivals like Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg testified that such payments have made it all but impossible to chip away at Google’s dominance. Meta cleaned up the chatbot following a flood of negative headlines.

Sign up instructions for Bard waitlist

In the past, Google has offered programs such as Google News Showcase to compensate publishers without undermining its core argument that the copyright doctrine of fair use permits use of their material. The company has also been more open to striking deals with wire services such as the AP, which are in the business of licensing content. The company plans to launch a pilot project initially with about 20 national news outlets, according to one of the people, who works at a media outlet that was contacted and asked not to be identified discussing private talks. Google is seeking to recruit news organizations for a new licensing project related to artificial intelligence, according to people familiar with the matter, a sign the company wants to strengthen strained ties with the industry.

Google cites articles and online outlets in its AI Overviews, which are short, AI-generated responses that top many search results. While publishers believe those summaries have cut traffic to their websites, they have been hesitant to shield their content from Google’s AI tools for fear of hurting their visibility in the company’s search results. Startups Perplexity AI Inc. and OpenAI have both started paying publishers to use their content in their chatbots, giving the media companies a much-needed infusion of revenue. Google also noted users of Dialogflow (formerly API.AI), Google’s end-to-end platform for building cross-platform conversational experiences, will automatically get access to basic Chatbase features within Dialogflow. Beyond bot analytics, the tool leverages Google’s machine learning capabilities to figure out what sort of problems could be affecting the bot.

“What is still far from clear is if there is an adverse ruling, what kind of changes to the search market structure the judge thinks might solve the monopoly issue,” the analysts said. The senior engineer was initially put on paid leave following his claims about LaMDA’s sentience. He was then fired in July for what Google said were violations of “employment and data security policies” after he publicly shared transcripts of his conversations with the bot. Bard initially will be available exclusively to a group of “trusted testers” before being widely released later this year, according to a Monday blog post from Google CEO Sundar Pichai. The waitlist to sign up to try Bard is available at bard.google.com. Instead of being incorporated directly into Google’s search engine, Bard can be found on its own website.