In March, Google released an artificial intelligence chatbot called Bard. This is Google’s answer to OpenAI’s very popular ChatGPT.
But Bard used less sophisticated AI than ChatGPT. Found to be less able and less communicative. Within a few weeks, Google changed the tool with upgraded technology, but ChatGPT continued to be the chatbot that grabbed the public’s attention.
On Tuesday, Google announced a plan to leapfrog ChatGPT by connecting Bard to its most popular consumer services, such as Gmail, Docs and YouTube. With the new features, Google has taken a step toward tying Bard into the company’s vast constellation of online products.
Bard has not received as much attention as ChatGPT. As of August, ChatGPT had nearly 1.5 billion desktop and mobile web visits, more than three times as many as Google’s AI tool and other competitors, according to data from Similarweba data analysis firm.
However, Jack Krawczyk, Google’s product lead for Bard, said in an interview that Google was aware of the issues that limited its chatbot’s appeal. “It’s neat and novel, but it doesn’t really mesh with my personal life,” said Mr. Krawczyk that users told the company.
Google’s release of what it calls Bard Extensions follows OpenAI’s announcement in March of the ChatGPT plug-in that allows the chatbot to gain access to updated information and third-party services from other companies, including Expedia, Instacart and OpenTable.
In the latest updates, Google will try to replicate some of its search engine capabilities, by including Flights, Hotels and Maps, so users can research travel and transportation. And Bard can come close to being a personalized assistant for users, allowing them to ask which emails it missed and what the most important point of a document is.
AI chatbots are widely known to offer not only correct information but also lies, in a phenomenon known as “hallucinations.” Users are left with no way to tell what is real and what is not.
Google believes it has taken a step toward addressing those issues by fixing the “Google It” button featured on Bard’s website, which allowed users to run Google searches on queries they asked the chatbot.
Now, the button will double check Bard’s answers. When Google has high confidence in a claim and evidence supports it, it will highlight the text in green and link to another webpage that backs up the information. When Google can’t find facts to back up a claim, the text is highlighted in orange instead.
“We’re really committed to making Bard more trustworthy by not only showing the confidence of our response, but admitting when we’re wrong,” said Mr. Krawczyk.
Various tech companies have poured billions of dollars into building the so-called large-scale language models that underlie Bard and other chatbots, systems that require vast amounts of data to learn. That has raised concerns about how companies like Google use consumers’ information.
The company sought to allay concerns about how Bard would use this information.
“We are committed to protecting your personal information,” Yury Pinsky, Bard’s director of product management, wrote in a blog post. “If you choose to use Workspace extensions, your content from Gmail, Docs and Drive will not be visible to human reviewers, which Bard uses to show you ads, or which is used to train Bard’s model. ”
said Mr. Krawczyk said Bard will uphold users’ privacy, though he declined to comment on how other Google services use this type of data.
Google also updated Bard’s underlying AI, the Pathways Language Model 2. It expanded the feature that allows users to upload images in more than 40 languages. And Google lets users share Bard’s conversations with each other, so they can see responses and ask the chatbot additional questions on the topic.
Even though people in more than 200 countries and territories can use Bard, Google still calls the tool an “experiment,” rather than a full product.
“It’s still the early days of this technology,” said Mr. Krawczyk, “and they have profound capabilities but they need to be well understood by the people who use them.”
