Google shares lose $100 billion overnight after Bard flubs answer

Google parent Alphabet Inc lost $100 billion in market value on Wednesday, with its shares sliding as much as 9 percent during regular trading, after its new chatbot, Bard, shared inaccurate information in a promotional video.

The error was about Google's advertisement where Bard is asked what discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are about.

Bard’s answers included one suggesting the JWST was used to take the very first pictures of a planet outside the Earth's solar system, or exoplanets, which were taken by the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in 2004.

Bard’s performance fed worries that the Google parent is losing ground to rival Microsoft Corp.

Google's live-streamed presentation on Wednesday morning did not include details about how and when it would integrate Bard into its core search function. A day earlier, Microsoft held an event touting that it had already released to the public a version of its Bing search with functions integrated.
Bard's error was discovered just before the presentation by Google, based in Mountain View, California.

Meanwhile, Microsoft shares rose around 3% before paring gains.

Google has been on its heels after OpenAI, which Microsoft is backing with around $10 billion, introduced the ChatGPT software in November that has wowed consumers with its surprisingly accurate and well-written answers to simple prompts.