Bard Times

Just as anticipated, global tech giant Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google, has unveiled the experimental version of its Bard AI, its competitive reply to Microsoft-backed ChatGPT owned by OpenAI.

In a cautious tone, Google made it clear to users that Bard is still an experiment and that it could get answers and many other things wrong. This is a move that is consistent with the cautious notes by most chatbot owners to manage the expectations of users should they spot wrong answers and incorrect outputs.

After we took Bard for a “ride,” here are the key capabilities that have been built into the chatbot:

• Bard can access and process information from the real world through Google Search, thereby keeping its response consistent with search results.
• It can also generate different creative text formats, like poems, code, scripts, musical pieces, emails, letters, etc.
• The chatbot can answer your questions in an informative way, even if they are open-ended, challenging, or strange.
• Just like its competitor, ChatGPT, Bard can generate different responses based on the context of the conversation.
• Bard is already built to integrate Gmail, and Docs for immediate export and further use.

From a comparative perspective, ChatGPT is better at generating creative text formats, like poems, code, scripts, musical pieces, emails, letters, etc., while Bard is better at answering questions in an informative way, even if they are open-ended, challenging, or strange. Similarly, ChatGPT is also better at understanding and responding to natural language, while Bard is better at processing information from the real world through Google Search.

The last part of the puzzle for Bard is how Google is able to commercialize the chatbot. While this might be far-fetched because Bard is still far behind ChatGPT on user counts and versatility, it is expected that Google will seek to blend Bard into its advertising model with the option of paid subscription for users who do not want to view ads or enterprise customers with the need for more advanced features. Whichever route Google chooses, one thing is certain, the AI war has just increased by several notches.