Google opens Bard chatbot to test users, plans more AI for search

Alphabet Inc will launch a chatbot service Bard and more artificial intelligence for its Google search engine following the public's rapid embrace of Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s chatbot, ChatGPT.

According to Alphabet Chief Executive Sundar Pichai, his company is opening Bard to test users for feedback, followed by a public release in the coming weeks.

Pichai, also said Google plans to add AI features to its search engine that synthesize material for complex queries.

Pichai described Bard as seeking to “combine the breadth of the world's knowledge with the power, intelligence, and creativity of” AI.

Behind Google's Bard is LaMDA, Google's AI that generated text with such skill that a company engineer called it sentient, a claim the technology giant and scientists widely dismissed.

In a demo, Bard asked users to give it a prompt while noting its response may be inappropriate or inaccurate. It then provided three bulleted responses to a question about a space telescope's discoveries.

To serve more people and improve based on their comments, Google is using a version of LaMDA that uses less processing power, according to Pichai.