Google released Google Bard in what many consider to be the tech giant’s reply to the success of ChatGPT. Google Bard is designed to do much of what ChatGPT is capable of. Still, we can expect it will have different and additional capabilities because Google has developed AI before for use in its voice assistant and other areas. This guide will look at what Google Bard is and everything you need to know about it.
What is Google Bard?
Google Bard is an AI chatbot developed by Google that uses the LaMDA large language model. Just like ChatGPT, it can converse with users and provide them with answers and information. Google has access to a massive amount of data through its search business, and the company says it has used trillions of words to ensure Google Bard can carry natural conversations with humans.
Since it is a conversational and generative AI, it relies on the prompts provided by users to do much more than provide answers and information, as it can also analyze and summarize data and create different types of content.
How Google Bard Compares to ChatGPT
While both of these AI solutions are very similar in that they are generative, they are very different, especially regarding their maturity. ChatGPT is a much more mature AI because it has been used in public for much longer. Since it learns on its own, it has improved over time as more people have used it.
Google Bard is still being tested, which is why it is still inaccessible to most people who are required to join a waitlist for now. Google has also said that its AI can produce inaccurate results because it is being trained, so it is not as reliable as ChatGPT at providing the answers and information people are looking for.
However, many experts believe Google Bard will quickly surpass ChatGPT for some key reasons. First, Google has vast experience creating conversational AI; just look at its voice assistant.
Second, it is assumed that Google has more training data from indexing billions of websites over the years. Google also has access to other data types such as voice search and behavioral data from its ads and search business. If Google uses this data to train its AI, we can expect it will be much more polished once it is mainstream.
How to Use Google Bard
To use Google Bard, you need a Google Account. You can then visit bard.google.com and provide your email address. You will be put on a waitlist and might be given access in a few days or weeks. If you are, you can revisit bard.google.com to start using the chatbot.
At this time, only select people and people for large corporations are getting access quickly, presumably because Google wants people to talk about Google Bard as much as possible before they roll it out to everyone.
Also, remember that you cannot use an email address tied to Google Workspace to sign up; you need a personal Gmail account.
Google Bard is Free, for Now
Google Bard remains free for all the people who have started using it. Google is unlikely to charge for the version they expect people to use daily. However, Google might follow the path that other projects like ChatGPT have followed. These projects have left their everyday versions — which have limited functionality — free, and charged for versions that have added functionality.
The main difference here is that OpenAI, although backed by Microsoft, has much less computational power than Google, which has been running servers for over two decades. Google might use its power, resources, and connections in the industry to provide a service that is either free or much cheaper than that offered by its competitors.
The Kinds of Content Google Bard Can Produce and What it Can Do
For now, people have mainly been using Google Bard to find information and to carry on conversations. However, the AI has said it can do much more, including generating text, translating language, and writing creative content.
Since you might not be happy with the answers it provides, you can press “Google It” to search for topics related to the prompt you provided. We have seen this happen with Bing Chat which uses ChatGPT to provide answers. Bing Chat gives you citations for all answers it provides plus links to its information sources.
This is a much better option because it is much smoother to go from an answer to the source page instead of the answer to a search engine where you might not even find the source of information provided.
Regarding creating content, Google Bard can create emails, musical pieces, letters, scripts, code (coming soon), and poems.
Google Bard, Search, and Other Uses
Google has already hinted that it intends to incorporate Google Bard into its search engine for better results and discoverability. It also says that it will incorporate it into its Pixel line of phones, where it will be able to answer messages and phone calls or screen phone calls so that users never receive spam calls.
Concerns About Plagiarism and Accuracy
There are also concerns that Google Bard plagiarized content, and there is enough to suggest that this is happening. Some of its answers and information are pulled from sources verbatim, which is not a concern when using ChatGPT.
There are also concerns about accuracy even in cases where Google Bard gets the information right. For example, it can provide the correct information but quote the wrong source. This is an issue because it might send people to the wrong source of information, which can impact their user experience while cannibalizing traffic for the real source of that information.
Goole Bard is the most interesting competitor and alternative to ChatGPT, especially because of the company behind it. Although the AI is limited in what it can do right now, we can expect it to improve exponentially and be able to do much more than it currently does for those who have access to it.