By Michael Elkins
Google’s parent company, Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG) announced in a blog post on Monday that the company is planning to launch a chatbot service called “Bard”. Bard is powered by LaMDA, Google's AI that can generate human-like prose. The technology company opened the conversational AI service to test users for feedback, and will be followed by a public release in the coming weeks.
According to the post by CEO Sundar Pichai, Google also plans to add AI-powered features to its search engine that synthesize information to answer complex queries, like whether a guitar or the piano is easier to learn to play. And Google will give tools, first powered by LaMDA and later by other AI technology, to web developers, creators and enterprises starting next month.
“We’ve been working on an experimental conversational AI service, powered by LaMDA, that we’re calling Bard. And today, we’re taking another step forward by opening it up to trusted testers ahead of making it more widely available to the public in the coming weeks,” wrote Pichai.
“Bard seeks to combine the breadth of the world’s knowledge with the power, intelligence and creativity of our large language models. It draws on information from the web to provide fresh, high-quality responses. Bard can be an outlet for creativity, and a launchpad for curiosity, helping you to explain new discoveries from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to a 9-year-old, or learn more about the best strikers in football right now, and then get drills to build your skills.”
Shares of GOOG and GOOGL are down 1.55% and 1.60% respectively near end-of-day trading on Monday.