Google tells employees that Bard A.I. isn’t just about search: Report

On Thursday, an all hands meeting was held wherein company executives answered questions from Dory, company’s internal forum, based on issues related to Bard, according to audio as obtained by CNBC. 

In the meeting, Jack Krawczyk, the product lead for Bard said that the AI tool is not just for search. 

Also Read: ChatGPT vs Bard vs Ernie: The revolutions of AI

In the meeting, executives were were asked, “Bard and ChatGPT are large language models, not knowledge models. They are great at generating human-sounding text, they are not good at ensuring their text is fact-based. Why do we think the big first application should be Search, which at its heart is about finding true information?” as viewed by CNBC.

Also Read: Will Microsoft Bing outplay Google’s Bard?

Responding to this, Krawczyk said, “I just want to be very clear: Bard is not search rather an experiment that’s a collaborative AI service.” Further adding he said that the magic we are finding while using the product is around being a creative companion that will help spark creativity and satisfy curiosity, among other things.

He also clarified that users cant be stopped from trying to use it like search. 

He said Google is still catering to those who want to use it for search, saying that the company has designed a new function for internal usage dubbed “Search It.” He also added that users will see a link that reads “view other drafts,” he continued, directing users to stay away from search-like results, as per CNBC report. Another executive, Elizabeth Reid who is the vice president of engineering for search also said that “Bard is really separate from search”.

Based on what employees told CNBC and on internal memes that circulated in recent weeks, the attempt to separate the AI tool from search appeared to signify a pivot in the initial strategy. However, at the Bard announcement, Google officials emphasised many times that the technology they were in-house building will be integrated with search.

Several employees told CNBC on anonymity that inconsistent answers from executives led to greater confusion.

While making the announcement on blogpost, Sunda Pichai wrote, “We’re working to bring latest AI advancements into our products, starting with Search.”

Google’s Bard is based on LaMDA, the firm’s Language Model for Dialogue Applications system, and has been in development for several years. The AI bot primarily draws on information from the web to provide fresh, high-quality responses and offers up-to-the date responses, something ChatGPT is unable to do as it is mainly programmed to run on data fed to it. 

The Alphabet owned Google claims that Bard will also perform mundane tasks, such as providing tips for planning a party, or lunch ideas based on what food is left in a refrigerator. “Bard can be an outlet for creativity, and a launchpad for curiosity,” Pichai explained during the announcement of the company’s AI chatbot. However, soon after Alphabet Inc’s new chatbot shared inaccurate information in a promotional video, the Google parent company lost $100 billion in market value. It claimed that the James Webb space telescope took the first pictures of planets outside the Earth’s solar system when in fact it was the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope. People on Twitter also pointed out how an ad for Bard offered an incorrect description of a telescope used to take the first pictures of a planet outside our solar system.