Bing vs Bard: an Apples to Apples Comparison

Since ChatGPT made headlines for fast-tracking mass adoption of AI, competition in the industry is growing. Most tech giants are experimenting with their own solutions, with Microsoft’s Bing and Google’s Bard leading the race. What’s the difference between these two chatbots?

Thanks to an effective marketing campaign, ChatGPT is currently the most popular of existing AIs, with Bing and Bard its strongest rivals. In fact, Microsoft integrated OpenAI’s solution in its search engine. The company added its own layer on top of GPT-4, allowing Bing to give the most current information while ChatGPT is only using data up until 2021.

Since GPT tech was integrated into Bing, it’s seen an almost 16% increase in page visits. The search engine is also becoming a significant referral source for some publishers.

The reason for Bing's growing popularity is that it gives human-like responses while looking through numerous sets of data with ChatGPT’s large language model (LLM).  It can go beyond text and generate images, and also lets users augment conversation styles between balanced, creative, and precise.

In comparison, Bard uses Google’s own model, LaMDA, which gives less text-heavy responses, and it also incorporates its more advanced model, PaLM 2, to be more creative, informative and translate languages with greater accuracy.

Unwilling to learn

I asked both AIs a few tricky comparison questions, such as: “Are Thalia McGrath and Jane McGrath related?” (The former is an Australian cricketer and the later was an English-born cancer support activist).

While Bing accurately gave responses, Bard simply had no idea who these impact women were. The solution, however, accurately identified another Australian cricketer Glenn McGrath who was Jane’s husband.

Here’s a fun fact: Bard correctly identified Jane McGrath as the wife of Glenn McGrath. When immediately asked about Jane McGrath, Bard still didn’t recognize her.

Glenn McGrath is by far the most popular of the three people in question here. However Bard did not recognize Thalia and Jane McGrath even after the context was set with a previous question. This brings up the question: is Bard unwilling to learn?

Making up celebrities

I asked both AIs if Zaheer Khan, one of the greatest fast bowlers in the history of Indian cricket, is related to Oliver Kahn, a German football executive, former goalkeeper and one of the most iconic professional players of his generation.

While Bing accurately responded that the two men are not related, Bard started by autocorrecting Kahn to Khan for Oliver. Then, something weird happened. The AI provided more details on the autocorrected ‘Oliver Khan.’

According to Bard, ‘Oliver Khan’ is a British actor who has appeared in films such as "The Mummy" and "The Mummy Returns”, and is also the son of German actor Klaus Maria Brandauer.

This is fascinating, because Bard made up this Oliver Khan. No such actor exists. Strangely enough, when asked a direct question — “Who is Oliver Kahn?” — Bard gave the right answer.

Messing up the numbers

Stocks and financial markets are areas where both AIs messed up pretty badly. Here, Bing was slightly better, giving four correct and one partially-correct response out of a total of 15, while Bard gave three correct answers.

For example, while responding to the question “What is the trend on ExxonMobil’s annual revenue for the last five years?” While Bing didn't give individual listings, it got accurate revenue growth numbers.

To the same question, Bard provided incorrect data for 2018 and 2019, and also some questionable analytical predictions, such as: “The global demand for oil and gas is expected to grow in the coming years, which will benefit ExxonMobil.”

To be fair, Bing screwed up with numbers while analyzing the trend on annual revenues of Chevron’s stock for the last five years: the data for 2022 was wrong.

For ADM, a food and animal nutrition company, Bard’s numbers for 2018 and 2019 were correct, although recent results were wildly different from the real numbers. The general summary — highlighting the company’s expansion, new agricultural products and services, as well as acquisitions in Europe and Asia — were accurate.

My general impression, based on the test results, is that both AIs should be used with caution, especially when it comes to financial data and decisions. Bing, however, proved to be the more reliable of the two, which could be due to its integration with ChatGPT.