Alphabet said it is rolling out its artificial-intelligence chatbot, Bard, in Europe and Brazil on Thursday, the product’s most significant expansion since its February launch and pitting it against Microsoft-backed rival ChatGPT. The company is adding more languages to the service and introducing new productivity and personalization features.
Both Bard and ChatGPT use large language models that generate text to hold conversations with users and answer myriad prompts — such as, “What is the weather today?” or, “Write a poem about a migraine.” They also both try to understand nuances of speech to deliver more natural-sounding responses and to help reduce reliance on keywords.
Venture capitalists have poured billions into companies that use such technology, and it’s also been embraced by consumers. But critics say the programs can be prone to mistakes and reflect the data biases they’re trained in.
Some companies are warning employees not to use the programs. For example, Samsung recently banned employees from using ChatGPT and GitHub’s Copilot because they feared they could leak internal code. The company’s move followed a report that employees at other tech giants were also using the tool and sharing sensitive information with strangers.
Google’s senior product director Jack Krawczyk vowed that Bard had been enhanced with features to boost transparency, control, and choice for users. They include the ability to select the tone and style of their conversations with the bot – short, long, professional, or casual. They can also choose whether their conversations are saved or deleted by Google, pin or rename their conversation history and export it to more places. The company also allows people to change their answers to specific questions and use images in their prompts, allowing for more natural interactions.
In addition, the company allows customers to choose which language they want their Bard to use in response to a question, making it easier to get results. Previously, the program was only available in English and Spanish, but it will now also support Arabic, Chinese (simplified and traditional), German, and Hindi. In the future, the company plans to add more languages and improve its translation capabilities.
Interested users can join the waitlist for the service, which is open to anyone in the U.S. or U.K. They’ll need a Google Account and be at least 18 years old to participate. Google will collect feedback from early users to further refine the system.
