Google’s Bard – Analyzing the Much-Awaited Public Launch

Earlier this year, on Feb 6, 2023, Sundar Pichai introduced Google’s Bard to the world. He talked about how Google was re-oriented in 2017 around artificial intelligence to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

And on May 10, 2023, they finally made it available to the public.

Bard Enters the Chat

Powered by Google’s next-generation language and conversation capabilities, Bard is an experimental conversational AI service (yeah, we know you’re still not over ChatGPT). The first glimpse said that Bard could be used to:

• Plan a baby shower

• Compare two movies

• Chalk out a recipe out of whatever’s left in your fridge

• Simplify complex topics

The initial release was powered by a lighter version of their large language model as it required less computing power, and thus, enabled them to scale more users.

Some of the characteristics of Bard they earlier highlighted include:

• Brings the benefits of AI into everyday products

• Helps developers innovate with AI (significantly reducing app development costs)

• Bold & responsible

The Public Appearance

And well, like any showstopper would have it, all eyes have been on Bard ever since Google announced its public release. Now available for use in more than 180 countries, it’s available in a number of languages including Japanese and Korean with 40 more languages coming soon.

What’s more? You will soon be able to use it in Gmail and Google Docs too.

Google has introduced Bard as ‘your creative and helpful collaborator, here to supercharge your imagination, boost your productivity, and bring your ideas to life.’

However, the company has also clarified that Bard is an experiment and may give inaccurate or inappropriate responses, urging people to help make Bard better by leaving feedback.

Google I/O 2023

Google made all these and more announcements at Google I/O 2023. They talked about how AI is currently helping them enhance the capabilities of their products.

• Help me Write in Gmail

• New Immersive View for Routes in Google Maps

• A new Magic Editor experience in Google Photos

Expanding upon their aim of making artificial intelligence more helpful for everyone, they highlighted how they are advancing their timeless mission.

1. By improving their users’ knowledge and learning and deepening their understanding of the world.

   
   

2. By boosting creativity and productivity so that the users can express themselves and get things done.

   
   

3. By enabling developers and businesses to build their own transformative products and services.

   
   

4. By building and deploying AI responsibly to make sure everyone benefits equally.

Getting Started With Google Bard

As is the case with most Google apps, you can start using Bard by signing up on bard.google.com if you have a Google account. I signed up recently, and here are some first thoughts.

• The response time is just a few seconds (faster than GPT4)

• The user interface is better than ChatGPT

• It allows you to export the responses to Docs and draft in Gmail, and well, if there’s something you are unsure about, you can Google it in one tap! (Let’s all just agree the search engine is invincible.)

Bard’s capacity to hold information is limited at the moment, but the FAQs address that saying its ability to hold context will improve gradually.

Google has also clarified that your conversations on Bard will not be used for advertising purposes and that any changes to this approach will be communicated clearly.

Wrapping Up

It is safe to conclude that Google Bard is a step in the right direction, and as more conversational AI platforms come into existence, it will be interesting to keep an eye on all the AI wars that will most certainly follow.

Have you tried out Bard yet? What are your first thoughts?