Google parent Alphabet Inc. Monday said it will launch a chatbot service and more artificial intelligence for its search engine as well as developers, a riposte to Microsoft Corp. in their rivalry to lead a new wave of technology.
“AI is the most profound technology we are working on today. Whether it’s helping doctors detect
diseases earlier or enabling people to access information in their own language, AI helps people,
businesses, and communities unlock their potential. And it opens up new opportunities that could
significantly improve billions of lives. That’s why we re-oriented the company around AI six years ago
— and why we see it as the most important way we can deliver on our mission: to organize the
world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
Since then we’ve continued to make investments in AI across the board, and Google AI and
DeepMind are advancing the state of the art. Today, the scale of the largest AI computations is
doubling every six months, far outpacing Moore’s Law. At the same time, advanced generative AI and
large language models are capturing the imaginations of people around the world. In fact, our
Transformer research project and our field defining paper in 2017, as well as our important advances
in diffusion models, are now the basis of many of the generative AI applications you are starting to see
today.
Introducing Bard
“It’s a really exciting time to be working on these technologies as we translate deep research and
breakthroughs into products that truly help people. That’s the journey we’ve been on with large
language models. Two years ago we unveiled next-generation language and conversation
capabilities powered by our Language Model for Dialogue Applications (or LaMDA for short).
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.
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.”
Use Bard to simplify complex topics, like explaining new discoveries from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to a 9-year-old
We’re releasing it initially with our lightweight model version of LaMDA. This much smaller model
requires significantly less computing power, enabling us to scale to more users, allowing for more
feedback. We’ll combine external feedback with our own internal testing to make sure Bard’s
responses meet a high bar for quality, safety, and groundedness in real-world information. We’re
excited for this phase of testing to help us continue to learn and improve Bard’s quality and speed.”
Bringing the benefits of AI into our everyday products
“We have a long history of using AI to improve Search for billions of people. BERT, one of our first
Transformer models, was revolutionary in understanding the intricacies of human language. Two
years ago, we introduced MUM, which is 1,000 times more powerful than BERT and has next-level
and multi-lingual understanding of information which can pick out key moments in videos and provide
critical information, including crisis support, in more languages.
Now, our newest AI technologies — like LaMDA, PaLM, Imagen and MusicLM — are building on this,
creating entirely new ways to engage with information, from language and images to video and audio.
We’re working to bring these latest AI advancements into our products, starting with Search.
One of the most exciting opportunities is how AI can deepen our understanding of information and
turn it into useful knowledge more efficiently – making it easier for people to get to the heart of what
they’re looking for and get things done. When people think of Google, they often think of turning to us
for quick factual answers, like “how many keys does a piano have?” But increasingly, people are
turning to Google for deeper insights and understanding – like, “is the piano or guitar easier to learn,
and how much practice does each need?” Learning about a topic like this can take a lot of effort to
figure out what you really need to know, and people often want to explore a diverse range of opinions
or perspectives.”
AI can be helpful in these moments, synthesizing insights for questions where there’s no one right
answer. Soon, you’ll see AI-powered features in Search that distill complex information and multiple
perspectives into easy-to-digest formats, so you can quickly understand the big picture and learn
more from the web: 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.”
Pichai said, these new AI features will begin rolling out on Google Search soon.
