Bard, Google’s ChatGPT competitor AI, now available in beta

Looks like Google is in a chaotic mode around the Bard chat AI. On the one hand it promised early access to those in the Pixel Superuser community, on the other, it released a beta for US and UK users. Basically, anyone in those countries can go to bard.google.com and ask to join the waiting list to test the company’s chatbot, basically its alternative to ChatGPT.

Google Bard AI is currently only being tested in the US and UK

Google seems to be a bit more cautious than OpenAI and Microsoft were when they launched ChatGPT-based solutions. When you first log into Bard, Google warns that it’s just an “experiment” at this point and that the answers given by the AI could be completely wrong. The company also warns that what Bard answers is not necessarily aligned with the company’s official positions on various topics.

Bard is thus a new AI-based language model that can respond in a natural way to user queries. With Google at its disposal, this model could provide better-tuned answers than ChatGPT, which operates on a closed database, or the alternative Bing, which uses an inferior search engine.

However, as a product in an earlier stage of development, Bard is more error-prone than ChatGPT. This again demonstrates that Google was taken by surprise when it saw the launch of ChatGPT and the rapid integration of this technology into the Bing search engine. It may be quite a long time before Bard gets to a point where it’s integrated directly into Google’s main search page, as we’ve been seeing on Bing for weeks now.

Google says it will use user conversations to improve its language model, but there’s also the option of not offering Bard discussions to the company if you don’t want to. On the other hand, you can report erroneous answers, improving the algorithm for future answers.

Already many users in the US and UK report that they have already received invitations for Bard access, so Google provides very fast access to the service. Presumably if it is successful in these regions, the beta will be extended to the rest of the world in the coming weeks.