Google rolls out AI chatbot Bard to Europe and Brazil

Google rolls out its AI-powered chatbot Bard across Europe and in Brazil, expanding its availability to hundreds of millions more users.

The company also said it’s adding more features to Bard as it scrambles to keep up with rival Microsoft — which uses OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT service in its Bing search engine — in the race to capitalize on generative artificial intelligence technology that has captured worldwide attention.

Google detailed the improvements in a blog post, which said Bard can now be used in more than 40 languages, including Arabic, Chinese, German, Hindi and Spanish.

Users also can tailor the tone and style of Bard’s replies and ask it to read out responses, which Google said is “helpful if you want to hear the correct pronunciation of a word or listen to a poem or script.” English-language users can now start uploading images along with prompts for Bard to analyze for answers, Google said.

In this blog, we'll discuss the advantages and disadvantages of Bard, and the differences between Bard and ChatGPT.

Benefits of Bard

1. Built Cutting edge Model

One of the top advantages of Google Bard is the cutting-edge model that it is based on. i.e., PaLM2. This model is ultramodern featuring improved multilingual, coding abilities, and reasoning. The model is trained on a large set of data including source codes from open-source repositories, Wikipedia articles, social media conversations, books, news articles, etc. The model also empowers Bard with the features of generative as well as problem-solving abilities.

2. Conversational Human-like Responses

Another impressive feature of Google Bard is its capacity to understand text-based prompts because it employs natural language processing to give the prompted questions replies that sound conversational and human. The Google Bard, which is effectively a chatbot, can reply to commands and can answer questions.

3. Provides Real-time Information and Internet Access

With Google Bard, you can get the most recent and up-to-date results because it uses Google search to gather data from the Internet. For people working in research or virtually anyone gathering information for any purpose, its ability to provide a real-time internet connection is tremendously helpful. To generate knowledge and create responses to the prompts, Google Bard employs sources from Google search, which results in reliable and pertinent material across a range of topics and disciplines.

4. Extensions Through Plugins

Another one of the significant advantages of Google Bard is its feature of extensions applicable through plugins. Users can make use of this feature in other apps or sites like Spotify, YouTube, Adobe, travel sites, etc, to control streaming, watch videos in the same chat interface, generate booking recommendations, or produce images using prompts.

Disadvantages of Bard

1. Inaccuracy, ambiguity, and bias

One of Google Bard's main drawbacks is the extent to which it can offer false, unclear, and biased information. The model on which Google Bard is based was trained using enormous data sets, some of which might be biased. Sometimes, the information it offers could be false or erroneous. As a result, users must endure the hassle of repeatedly verifying the accuracy of whatever information they have obtained from Google Bard. Google Bard also faces difficulties due to its restriction of delivering ambiguous results. It occasionally misses the context of the questions, leading to irrelevant responses. To produce the greatest replies, users are required to provide as much context as they can while providing prompts.

2. Limited creativity

While AI models, including language models like GPT-3 that power Bard, have shown impressive capabilities in generating text, they lack the inherent creativity and imagination that humans possess.

Bard's training is based on vast amounts of existing text and code, which it uses to generate responses. While it can produce coherent and contextually relevant text, its ability to generate truly original ideas or stories is limited. It relies on patterns and examples from its training data to generate responses, rather than having an innate creative spark or the ability to think abstractly.

3. Privacy concerns

Bard is trained on a massive dataset of text and code, which includes personal information. This raises privacy concerns about the use of Bard. Additionally, Bard may be able to access and process personal information that is not publicly available. This could be used to track or profile individuals without their consent.

Differences between Bard and ChatGPT

1. Bard offers a better user experience

When it comes to user-friendly design, Bard surpasses ChatGPT by a wide margin. It allows you to edit your questions after asking them and provides multiple responses to choose from. Not only does Bard boast a more appealing appearance with formatted text, but it also offers enhanced functionality compared to ChatGPT's chunky text.

Each response from Bard includes a call to action (CTA) that encourages you to verify its origins by Googling it. Moreover, Bard seamlessly integrates with your Google Workspace, enabling easy uploads of its responses to Google Docs or Gmail.

In contrast, ChatGPT allows you to view all your past questions in a side panel, making it more collaborative when sharing conversations with friends and colleagues.

When you send a link to someone, they can import the conversation into their ChatGPT interface, enabling them to enjoy the amusing exchanges, detailed prompts, and continue the conversation where you left off, preserving the memories of the discussion.

2. Bard is built for research, whereas ChatGPT is the better writer

Setting aside critical thinking skills, Bard proves highly useful for finding concise solutions to various problems. It compiles the most relevant information from Google, managing information comparisons and page-clicking on your behalf.

On the other hand, GPT powers several other AI tools like Jasper, Copy.ai, and Bing's AI tools, serving as the industry standard for natural language tasks. It excels in web writing, generating text based on statistical trends. While ChatGPT includes a chatbot feature, it can also act as a summarizer and translator.

ChatGPT is particularly effective in generating content marketing ideas, crafting long-form articles, and writing emails. Overall, while GPT handles a diverse range of text tasks, Bard seems primarily designed as a research tool.

3. Bard draws from Google Search, whereas ChatGPT's web browser is powered by Bing

Bard's effectiveness as a research tool heavily relies on its ability to tap into the internet. Unlike ChatGPT's free version, which acts like an encyclopedia with data up to 2021, Bard actively scours Google for answers beyond its training data.

This proves especially valuable for researching recent events, summarizing crucial information from web pages, and presenting relevant images for visual context.

ChatGPT Plus, the only option to access the internet with ChatGPT, is less user-friendly, requiring users to click on the web browser powered by Microsoft Bing.

4. Summarizing web information

An essential feature of any research tool is the ability to provide concise summaries of content or publications, particularly when dealing with complex subjects. Bard excels in this area.

To get a summary, you only need to provide a link to an article, and Bard will organize the information into bullet points with factual precision, delivering an amazing summary.

You can ask Bard to provide comprehensive summaries of research articles, medical journals, or websites covering intricate subjects. Furthermore, you can ask follow-up questions if there are points you don't fully comprehend, transforming the research process.

For ChatGPT, summarizing articles is possible by copying and pasting the text into the prompt box. However, ChatGPT has a token limit of 4,096 (approximately 3,000 words), so longer texts like research papers would require ChatGPT Plus.

Conclusion

In this blog, we explored the advantages and disadvantages of Bard, an AI chatbot, and compared it to ChatGPT. Bard offers several advantages, including its ability to provide quick and accurate information, its accessibility across various platforms, and its potential to assist with basic tasks. It can be a useful tool for obtaining information and engaging in basic conversations.

Choosing between Bard and ChatGPT depends on the specific needs and expectations of the user. Bard's simplicity and accessibility may be preferable for quick and straightforward interactions, while ChatGPT's advanced capabilities may be more suitable for in-depth conversations and a broader range of topics.