Google has finally made a move. Sundar Pichai’s company has been in “code red” since ChatGPT’s fame began to sprout, since its way of answering any question endangered its search engine. Therefore, it was only a matter of time before the company launched its own Artificial Intelligence tool, and it has finally done so with Bard.
It was expected that tomorrow, in a surprise event convened by the company, this or a similar Artificial Intelligence novelty would be presented, but Google has anticipated the leaks with an official report in which it has officially presented Bard. It is an AI based on LaMDA, an experimental language model that is specifically designed for dialogue, in the same way that ChatGPT uses the GPT-3 model.
Google claims that this is “an important new step” in its Artificial Intelligence journey, and not for nothing. As they explain in the report, they refocused the company’s objectives six years ago towards this technology, and since then they have not stopped working with DeepMind on both concrete solutions (such as helping surgery processes) and generic ones, such as the launch of Bard.
What is Bard? Google’s new AI tool
As they explain, Bard is an experimental tool that will be available to the public in the coming weeks. The technology seeks to “combine the breadth of knowledge of the world with the power, intelligence and creativity of our large linguistic models,” and relies on information gathered from the Internet to provide its answers.
In the report, Google has also given some examples of how this technology can be used, such as “explaining new discoveries from NASA‘s James Webb Space Telescope to a 9-year-old” or “learning more about the best strikers in soccer right now”. However, as we have come to realize with ChatGPT, technology of this imprint can be used for much more, from scripting to SEO.
To make this tool useful to the widest possible audience, Google is simplifying its current LaMDA model to optimize the answers in terms of concreteness and speed, so that it can be used by anyone. In addition, this AI will never stop learning. It will use conversations with users to improve its answers, so it will be constantly growing.
Google has also shown how Bard’s answers will look in its search engine, where it will be directly integrated. When you ask a question or make a query that can be answered by Bard, the first thing that will appear will be a square with an automated answer from Bard. This will be followed by everything else we know from Google today, from the latest news to classic links.
The idea is to “extract complex information and multiple perspectives in easy-to-digest formats”. In addition, it will use the specific search for each topic on the web to provide an answer to the user before they have to be linked to another web page. This is something the search engine has been trying for some time, through automated responses, but now it may gain more traction than ever with Bard.
As they confirm in the report, next month they will start providing the Bard experience to developers, creators and companies so that they can test this generative language API. The idea is to do enough tests and, little by little, to launch it worldwide during 2023.
This news may undoubtedly represent a paradigm shift for Google and everything we know about the search engine. The media may soon have to adapt to a new reality for which they may not have been prepared, and users may find the answers of an AI more and more useful than those of specialized media. What may be great news may also entail dozens of negative or simply different things… although we will have to wait to see what finally happens.
