Google is now allowing access to Bard (Bidirectional Attention Representation from Dialogue), its recently developed chatbot tool based on AI, which competes directly with ChatGPT.
As of now, Bard is only available to users in the US and the UK, but Google plans to expand it to more countries and languages. The project is part of a larger effort by Google to explore the potential of AI in creative expression and to make it more accessible to users.
The model
Bard is powered by Google’s Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA), a highly advanced machine learning model regularly updated with new information. To ensure a faster deployment to the general public, Google employed a lightweight version of the LaMDA language model.
- LaMDA uses a decoder-only transformer language model, meaning it does not have an encoder component to process input text.
- It is pre-trained on a text corpus that includes both documents and dialogs consisting of 1.56 trillion words.
- After pre-training, LaMDA is fine-tuned on data that has been manually annotated for sensibleness, interestingness, and safety. This helps the model learn to generate responses that are not only grammatically correct, but also sensible, engaging, and safe to use in conversation.
- The training of Google Bard is primarily based on four major models: Large Language Models, Transformer Models, Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs), and Diffusion Models. These models play a crucial role in Google Bard’s language synthesis and conversation abilities.
- LaMDA also interacts with an external information retrieval system which helps it provide more accurate and informative responses.
Bard in fierce competition with ChatGPT
In November 2022, OpenAI launched ChatGPT, an AI chatbot that can solve complex problems like drafting contracts and writing essays at a college level.
Amid the recent viral success of ChatGPT, tech giants such as Google, Microsoft, and Facebook are competing to develop and deploy new AI-powered tools. Google recently announced that it aims to integrate AI into its Gmail, Sheets, and Docs. Shortly after, Microsoft made a similar announcement.
Bard was unveiled last month in a demo that faced criticism for providing an incorrect answer to a telescope-related question. This led to a 7.7% drop in Alphabet’s stock price on the same day, causing a loss of $100 billion in market value. As Bard is still in its early stages, the PAIR team is actively working to improve its capabilities.
Bard vs ChatGPT
Bard and ChatGPT are both AI language models designed to generate human-like text based on input prompts. However, there are some differences between the two.
Bard’s LaMDA can source responses from the internet, providing it with the latest information. Furthermore, Bard is integrated with Google’s search engine, enabling it to offer direct links to relevant websites.
In contrast, ChatGPT is less current in terms of the latest training data and can only generate responses from its knowledge base that existed before September 2021.
Bard generates multiple drafts of each prompt, providing various options for responses. This feature allows users to select the most appropriate response that suits their needs. Its competitor, ChatGPT, generates only one draft.
Conclusion
Google’s Bard have the potential to be at least as good as ChatGPT and is expected to have a significant impact on how the public perceives and uses the powerful search engines.
Learn more:
- You can sign up to try Bard here
- Google’s overview of Bard (PDF document)
