Google Bard chatbot

Bard is a so-called 'experimental conversational AI service' developed by Google that 'seeks to combine the breadth of the world’s knowledge with the power, intelligence and creativity of our large language models.'

The service was announced by Google CEO Sandar Pillai on February 6, 2023 using a promotional video showing which satellite first took pictures of a planet outside the Earth's solar system, amongst other things.

Factual inaccuracies

According to Reuters, information in the video was inaccurate. Given the prompt: 'What new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) can I tell my 9-year old about?', Bart suggested the JWST was used to take the first pictures of a planet outside the Earth's solar system, or exoplanets.

The first pictures of exoplanets were actually taken by the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in 2004. The mistake reinforced views that Google is lagging Microsoft and Open AI in this area, and Google owner Alphabet's stock price fell USD 100 billion in market value. 

Microsoft and Open AI had launched Bing's integration of ChatGPT earlier the same day, though Microsoft's system was also found to be plagued by inaccuracies and untruths.

System

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLWXJ22LUEc

• https://twitter.com/Google/status/1622710355775393793

• https://blog.google/technology/ai/bard-google-ai-search-updates/

News, commentary, analysis

• https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-ai-chatbot-bard-offers-inaccurate-information-company-ad-2023-02-08/

• https://www.cbsnews.com/video/microsoft-ceo-on-new-ai-powered-search-engine-the-future-of-artificial-intelligence/

• https://www.newscientist.com/article/2358426-google-bard-advert-shows-new-ai-search-tool-making-a-factual-error/

• https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/2/8/google-shares-tank-8-as-ai-chatbot-bard-flubs-answer-in-ad

• https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2023/02/08/googles-bard-ai-chatbot-gives-wrong-answer-launch-event/

• https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/feb/09/google-ai-chatbot-bard-error-sends-shares-plummeting-in-battle-with-microsoft

• https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/8/23590864/google-ai-chatbot-bard-mistake-error-exoplanet-demo

• https://news.sky.com/story/googles-new-ai-chatbot-bard-provides-inaccurate-answer-in-advert-12806192

• https://9to5google.com/2023/02/08/google-search-ai-content/