After a long wait, Bard, Google‘s chatbot that promises to become the definitive ChatGPT alternative, is now here.
What is Google Bard?
Bard is, in essence, an artificial intelligence system that uses machine learning and with which we can communicate using natural language. As with ChatGPT, we only have to chat with it as if it were a person and Bard will respond back to us. Its ability to learn allows it to improve its responses based on what we have previously talked to it.
Bard would not be possible without LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications), a language model similar to GPT. LaMDA is specially designed for dialoguing with people and is developed based on Google‘s proprietary Transformer neural network architecture (also used in GPT). Although it is not the company’s first work related to artificial intelligence, it is true that the appearance of the OpenAI model hastened Bard’s departure.
How to use Google Bard
On the occasion of the release of Google Bard, the company has decided that the first to test the model will be Google Pixel and Google One users. However, don’t worry: it will not be necessary to have a Google device to access Bard. For the time being, you can sign up for the waiting list, available through this link. When it becomes available, you will receive an email notification.
So far, Bard is an impressive service but with some rough edges that need to be ironed out. The model’s biggest hurdle is that it only responds to certain instructions, so you’ll often have to ask it multiple times to generate code, translate text and perform other functions.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai accelerated Bard’s development through 2022 after the immense success of ChatGPT. At the moment, Bard is only accessible to a small group of users and we do not have a specific date for its final release.
However, Sunda Pichai mentioned in his keynote speech that we would soon see how Google Bard would improve Google search.
ChatGPT or Google Bard: which is better?
ChatGPT and Google Bard employ natural language and machine learning techniques to generate “conversation”. Still, they have several differences: for starters, ChatGPT uses a limited database until 2021, while Google Bard has the ability to leverage information from the Internet to produce more accurate responses. ChatGPT focuses primarily on providing more informal interactions and is something that Bing employs for its new searches. In a similar way, Google Bard will be used to enrich the Google search experience.
If you are interested in experimenting with these chatbots, you already know that with Google Bard you will have to wait, while ChatGPT is available to use for free. In addition, OpenAI has just released GPT-4, an even more powerful model than GPT-3.5, the heart of ChatGPT. However, to access the new version you will have to subscribe to ChatGPT Plus (it will cost you about $20 per month).
