Google announces Bard, the GPT Chat alternative optimized to replace Google Search

Even at the risk of stirring up countless controversies and providing the ideal basis for a billion-dollar class action lawsuit, Google announces Bard, a similar Chat GPT service that proposes to replace Google Search listings with well-reasoned results, giving users exactly the answer they want, using information pulled from sites they no longer need to visit.

If Chat GPT has turned out to be a nightmare for teachers hoping to discover initiative and creativity in student-written essays, Google Bard could spell the end of traditional websites, which measure their success and revenue in visitor-generated views. Instead, the role of information could be ceded to an all-knowing AI, capable of generating coherent answers to virtually any question asked, using centralised extracts from permanently ‘brushed’ sites. Depending on the accuracy and volume of information presented, visiting cited sites could become optional, especially for searches that target a specific piece of information that can be extracted and presented in a succinct way.

“Bard can be a muse for creativity and a springboard for curiosity, helping you explain new discoveries (e.g. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope) to a 9-year-old or learn about the best strikers in football right now and then learn drills to develop your skills,” explains Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai in a blog post. According to him, the company is taking steps to ensure that Bard’s answers “meet a high standard for quality, safety, and grounding in real-world information.”

Bard will be available to the general public “in the coming weeks,” Google says.

Google’s announcement highlights the pressure the company is feeling from ChatGPT, the service created by OpenAI and tech giant Microsoft, which has rushed to integrate ChatGPT into its search engine, Bing. Launched in November, ChatGPT has more than 30 million users and receives about 5 million visits a day.