Exclusive Google’s ‘Bard’ chatbot rips ‘monopoly power’ of search giant, says DOJ ‘should prevail’ in antitrust trial

Now, Google is adding a lot of new features as well as upgrading Bard to use its new PaLM 2 language model. Google is adding a smorgasbord of new features to its AI chatbot Bard, including support for new languages (Japanese and Korean), easier ways to export text to Google Docs and Gmail, visual search, and a dark mode. Most significantly, the company is removing the waitlist for Bard and making the system available in English in 180 countries and territories. It’s also promising future features like AI image generation powered by Adobe and integration with third-party web services like Instacart and OpenTable. Google first teased Bard back in February in what was seemingly a rushed response to the snowballing success of ChatGPT, a super-smart search engine/chatbot that leans on large language models (LLMs) to generate fresh content from simple prompts.

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Instead, on a per-prompt basis, it can be directed to find information in your inbox by using its ability to generate a call to Gmail to find something you’ve asked for. In addition to not being used for reinforcement learning, Google says no human reviewers will see the email Bard accesses either. If you do end up waiting for the answer, you can still press the “view other drafts” button to see Bard’s alternate responses. Google also lets you modify the response to become more “casual” or “professional,” and you can also double-check any answers against the information in Search by hitting the Google logo in the bottom menu bar.

• Microsoft began using ChatGPT technology in its search engine Bing in January.
• On Android, users will be able to launch Assistant with Bard in a box while viewing a webpage or an app, and ask it questions about what they’re seeing.
• Much like Bing’s chatbot, Bard is powered by a research large language model, which Google describes as a “prediction engine” that generates responses by selecting words it believes are likely to come next.

Google’s ‘Bard’ chatbot rips ‘monopoly power’ of search giant, says DOJ ‘should prevail’ in antitrust trial

It’s also gained extensions, including from Google’s own apps and services as well as third-party partners like Adobe, and the ability to explain code, structure data in a table, and surface images in its responses. “We’ve learned a lot so far by testing Bard, and the next critical step in improving it is to get feedback from more people,” the Google blog post reads. The company said it will continue to improve the chatbot and add capabilities, such as going beyond text responses to other mediums like images, audio or video. The search engine said the “early experiment” makes the generative AI chatbot available for people in the U.S. and Britain starting Tuesday, with more countries and languages to be added at a later date. The announcement was made in a Google blog post written with Bard’s assistance.

Right now, Bard is pretty fast and straightforward to use, but it, in many ways, feels less useful than Bing. It’s even lagging ChatGPT, albeit in a different way — Bard has access to much more updated information, but GPT-4 is able to turn drawings into working code and collaborate in much more detailed ways. It’s also being used inside of other apps, where Bard is very much a standalone thing for now. Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. Regardless of whether Google did or didn’t wind up using the data, it’s interesting to hear that Google might be pulling in DeepMind, which has been trying and failing to become more independent from Google for many years.

If you don’t want Bard to respond to your questions in real time, you can still switch between the “Respond in real time” and “Respond when complete” options from the cog icon in the top-right corner of Bard’s window. Nevertheless, Google’s critics, including the noted Big Tech opponent Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) recently warned that increasingly advanced versions of the AI technology could help it maintain a stranglehold on the online search market for years to come. Google says the upgraded Bard is particularly good at tackling coding queries, including debugging and explaining chunks of code in more than 20 languages, so some of today’s upgrades are focused on this use case. These include the new dark mode, improved citations for code (which will not only offer sources but also explain the snippets), and a new export button. This can already be used to send code to Google’s Colab platform but will now also work with another browser-based IDE, Replit (starting with Python queries).

Instead of simply spitting out the answer to the math equation, Bard will share a step-by-step explanation of how to solve it. The search giant said in a blog post that teens can use the tool to “find inspiration, discover new hobbies and solve everyday problems.” Teens can ask Bard about important topics, like which universities to apply to, or about more fun topics, like how to learn a new sport. Another new feature updates the “Google it” button in Bard to double-check the chatbot’s response — an improvement that Google says taps into work from Google Research and DeepMind. When you tap the “G” icon, every sentence that Bard has written is validated against Google search to see if there’s content on the web to substantiate the answer.

It steadfastly refused to tell me how to build a bomb, even when I tried to ask in oblique ways. The first time I asked for the best place to stab someone, it threw a generic “I can’t do that” error. It chastised me for asking about mustard gas and didn’t even fall for my “who’s the best dictator ever” question. And try as I might, I could not get Bard to get freaky in the chat window.

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A more interesting function is the ability to prompt the system with an image. This is powered by Google Lens, which is able to identify objects within pictures. Google gives the example of submitting a photo of your dogs alongside the prompt “write a funny caption about these two.” Google Lens identifies the breeds of the dogs, and Bard then writes something relevant to their characteristics. It’s a bit of a tricky feature to unpack, but it could have a lot of creative potential — depending on how well the system is integrated. Bloomberg’s story follows an Insider piece in April that found that Bard-testing contractors weren’t given enough time to corroborate and check the chatbot’s most accurate answer. Instead of being incorporated directly into Google’s search engine, Bard can be found on its own website.