Google Bard

Google Bardis a conversational artificial intelligence chatbot developed by Google, based on the LaMDA family of large language models. It was developed as a direct response to the rise of OpenAI's ChatGPT, and was released in a limited capacity in March 2023 to lukewarm responses.

Background

In November 2022, OpenAI launched ChatGPT, a chatbot based on the GPT-3 family of large language models (LLM). ChatGPT gained worldwide attention following its release, becoming a viral Internet sensation. Alarmed by ChatGPT's potential threat to Google Search, Google executives issued a "code red" alert, reassigning several teams to assist in the company's AI efforts. In a rare and unprecedented move, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who had stepped down from their roles as co-CEOs of parent company Alphabet in 2019, were summoned to emergency meetings with company executives to discuss Google's response to ChatGPT.\

Earlier that year, the company had unveiled LaMDA, a prototype LLM, but did not release it to the public. When asked by employees at an all-hands meeting whether LaMDA was a missed opportunity for Google to compete with ChatGPT, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, alongside Google AI chief Jeff Dean, stated that while the company had similar capabilities to ChatGPT, moving too quickly in that arena would represent a major "reputational risk" due to Google being substantially larger than OpenAI. In January 2023, DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis teased plans for a ChatGPT rival, and Google employees were instructed to accelerate progress on a ChatGPT competitor, intensively testing "Apprentice Bard" and other chatbots. Pichai assured investors during Google's quarterly earnings investor call in February that the company had plans to expand LaMDA's availability and applications.