Google to launch ChatGPT competitor 'Bard': Sundar Pichai
New York, Feb 7: Google CEO Sundar Pichai has announced that the tech giant will soon launch an Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered chatbot called Bard', aimed at countering the popularity of the ChatGPT tool backed by Microsoft.
According to a blog post by Pichai, the conversational AI service will be assessed by a group of "trusted testers" before being rolled out to the public in the coming weeks.
"Bard can be an outlet for creativity, and a launchpad for curiosity," Pichai, the Indian-origin CEO of Google and parent company Alphabet, said on Monday, adding that Google's chatbot will be able to explain complex subjects like new discoveries from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to a nine-year-old.
Google's announcement follows wide speculation that Microsoft is about to bring the AI chatbot ChatGPT to its search engine Bing, following a multi-billion dollar investment in the firm behind it, OpenAI, the BBC reported.
ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer), which was launched in November 2022, is capable of generating speeches, songs, marketing copy, news articles and student essays or human-like text based on the input it is given.
Bard, built on Google's existing large language model LaMDA, "seeks to combine the breadth of the world's knowledge with the power, intelligence, and creativity of our large language models", Pichai, 50, said in the blog.
AI chatbots are designed to answer questions and find information.
"Bard seeks to combine the breadth of the world's knowledge with the power, intelligence, and creativity of our large language models," Pichai said in the blog post.
Pichai said he wanted Google's AI services to be "bold with innovation and responsible in our approach". However, he did not elaborate on how Bard would be prevented from sharing harmful or abusive content.
He said that Google will initially release Bard with a "lightweight model" version of LaMDA which will require less computing power and enable the tech giant to scale to more users, allowing for more feedback.
"We're excited for this phase of testing," Pichai said, adding that Google will combine external feedback with internal testing to make sure Bard's responses meet a high bar for quality, safety and groundedness in real-world information.
"It's critical that we bring experiences rooted in these models to the world in a bold and responsible way. That's why we're committed to developing AI responsibly," he wrote in the blog.
Pichai also said on Monday that AI-powered tools will soon begin rolling out on Google's flagship Search tool.
"Soon, you'll see AI-powered features in Search that distil complex information and multiple perspectives into easy-to-digest formats, so you can quickly understand the big picture and learn more from the web," Pichai wrote, "whether that's seeking out additional perspectives, like blogs from people who play both piano and guitar, or going deeper on a related topic, like steps to get started as a beginner."
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Belagavi: Miscreants break into house, stab pregnant woman
Belagavi: Miscreants reportedly broke into a house and stabbed a pregnant woman to death using a knife, in Chikkuda village of Athani taluk here on Sunday.
The deceased pregnant woman has been identified as Suvarna Mantaiah Mathapathy (35) of Chikkuda village. Suvarna was a mother of four daughters and was expecting her fifth child. She was due to give birth within the week, with the delivery date already scheduled by her doctor.
The incident reportedly occurred on Saturday when Suvarna's husband went to the plantation to fetch fodder for the cows, and their children were at school. During this time, the attackers broke into the house and struck Suvarna with a sharp weapon, and later fled the scene.
When her husband returned and called for her, Suvarna did not respond. Upon entering the house, he found his pregnant wife lying in a pool of blood. He rushed her to a nearby private hospital, but the doctor confirmed that she had died on the way due to her severe injuries.
The exact reason for the murder is yet to be ascertained. Meanwhile, a case in connection with the incident has been lodged at the Athani Police Station.
