Google’s ChatGPT competitor is already sharing false information

Google’s recently-announced ChatGPT-like AI chatbot Bard is already making factual mistakes.

On Monday, February 6th, Google announced that its ChatGPT competitor Bard would go public in the coming weeks. In a blog post by Google CEO Sundar Pichai, an example of the chatbot’s capabilities was shown.

When asked, “What new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope can I tell my 9-year-old about?” the chatbot shared three simple-to-understand points, one of them being that “JWST took the very first pictures of a planet outside of our own solar system.”

While we know that the JWST is the most advanced telescope to peep at the universe with and can take better photos of planets outside our solar system, saying that the JWST took the very first picture of an exoplanet isn’t factual. As stated on Nasa’s website, the first image of an exoplanet was taken back in 2004, while the JWST became operational in 2022. The first exoplanet was imaged by the VLT (Very Large Telescope), stationed in Cerro Paranal, Antofagasta, Chile.

Several astronomers and astrophysicists were quick to point out the inaccuracy of Bard, with Grant Tremblay (@astrogrant) saying, “Not to be a ~well, actually~ jerk, and I’m sure Bard will be impressive, but for the record: JWST did not take “the very first image of a planet outside our solar system.” He added, “I do love and appreciate that one of the most powerful companies on the planet is using a JWST search to advertise their LLM. Awesome! But ChatGPT etc., while spooky impressive, are often *very confidently* wrong. Will be interesting to see a future where LLMs self error check.”

Not to be a ~well, actually~ jerk, and I’m sure Bard will be impressive, but for the record: JWST did not take “the very first image of a planet outside our solar system”.

the first image was instead done by Chauvin et al. (2004) with the VLT/NACO using adaptive optics. https://t.co/bSBb5TOeUW pic.twitter.com/KnrZ1SSz7h

— Grant Tremblay (@astrogrant) February 7, 2023

In a statement given to The Verge about Bard’s inaccuracy, a Google spokesperson said, “This highlights the importance of a rigorous testing process, something that we’re kicking off this week with our Trusted Tester program. 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.”

In related news, Microsoft has partnered with OpenAI to bring ChatGPT-like functionality to the Bing search engine. Read more about it here.

Via: The Verge