Google is rolling out a new conversational artificial-intelligence service to a select set of testers, and plans a broader public launch in coming weeks, part of the company’s effort to play catch-up with challengers such as OpenAI, creator of the popular chatbot ChatGPT.
The new experimental service, called Bard, generates textual responses to questions posed by users, based on information drawn from the web, Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Google parent Alphabet Inc., said in a blog post published Monday.
In that post, Mr. Pichai also shared a glimpse of new search engine features that will use AI to answer user queries, and said it would open up some of its AI programs to outside developers.
Google’s new products come amid a flurry of announcements by rival Microsoft Corp. about its use of AI technologies developed by OpenAI. Microsoft said last month it is making a multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment in the San Francisco AI startup. It said it would be opening up its tools for developers to build upon, and integrating them into its Bing search engine.
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Microsoft’s announcements have led to complaints from investors that Google hasn’t moved quickly enough to release its in-house AI tools, despite being the pioneer of some of the technologies used to build tools like ChatGPT. Those complaints have been echoed by some of its own researchers, The Wall Street Journal has reported.
In response, Google executives have recently sped up work to review and release artificial-intelligence programs to the general public, while also assigning teams of engineers to work on new ways to integrate new developments into areas such as the core search experience, the Journal reported.
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Google executives have also suggested they haven’t been slow so much as careful with their tools, drawing an implicit contrast to competitors tools, like ChatGPT, that can spout made-up information in response to some user queries. Google executives say they must test new tools to make sure they don’t show bias, and guard against misuse, concerns shared by many academics.
"It’s critical that we bring experiences rooted in these models to the world in a bold and responsible way," Mr. Pichai in his blog post on Monday. "That’s why we’re committed to developing AI responsibly."
He added that the new external testing period for Bard will be combined with internal research to make sure that it gives responses that meet Google’s "high bar for quality, safety and groundedness in real-world information."
Google is under the spotlight of regulators in the European Union, U.S. and other parts of the globe. In the EU, policy makers are considering a new AI law that could require companies to conduct risk assessments before launching new tools
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Google says its Bard service is based on its experimental artificial-intelligence program called LaMDA, which stands for Language Model for Dialogue Applications. Google last year suspended an engineer who contended that LaMDA had become sentient—a claim roundly rejected by scientists in the field.
