Google says, "Hey, We've got AI Too!"

Google is preparing for a competition in AI with its new chatbot "Bard," aimed at challenging the popularity of Microsoft-backed ChatGPT. According to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, "AI is the most profound technology we are working on today. Whether it's helping doctors detect diseases earlier or enabling people to access information in their own language, AI helps people, businesses and communities unlock their potential. And it opens up new opportunities that could significantly improve billions of lives. That's why we re-oriented the company around AI six years ago - and why we see it as the most important way we can deliver on our mission: to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." 

Bard will first be available to a select group of "trusted testers" before its public release later in the year. Bard promises to make complex subjects like space discoveries understandable for children, and perform various tasks such as providing party planning tips and meal suggestions based on the contents of a refrigerator. Pichai didn't mention if Bard can write prose like William Shakespeare, its inspiration. In his words, "Bard can be a source of creativity and a launchpad for curiosity."

Google announced Bard after Microsoft revealed its plans to invest billions into OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT and other AI tools that can write readable text and generate images. This move intensified the pressure on Google to keep up in the field of AI that is believed to have the same transformative impact as personal computers, the internet, and smartphones. According to CNBC, a team of Google AI engineers have been tasked with creating a response to ChatGPT. Bard was previously developed under a project called "Atlas" as part of Google's "code red" effort to counter ChatGPT's success.

Pichai has been advocating for AI for the past 6 years, and one of his initiatives, LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications), will power Bard. "Today, the scale of the largest AI computations is doubling every six months, far outpacing Moore's Law. At the same time, advanced generative AI and large language models are capturing the imaginations of people around the world. In fact, our Transformer research project and our field-defining paper in 2017, as well as our important advances in diffusion models, are now the basis of many of the generative AI applications you're starting to see today."  Google is also planning to integrate LaMDA and other AI advancements into its search engine to offer more helpful answers to its billions of users. Pichai hinted that the AI tools will be deployed in Google's search soon, without giving a specific timeline.

To further solidify its commitment to AI, Google recently invested in and partnered with AI startup Anthropic, led by former OpenAI leaders and focused on AI safety, with its own AI chatbot named Claude.