Google has decided to respond to the threat and challenge offered by Microsoft's OpenAI and its AI chatbot, ChatGPT.

Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai wrote a blog post in which he discussed the upcoming addition of AI-based capabilities to Google Search. However, it's worth noting that until now, LaMDA was only accessible to a small group of beta testers through the company's AI Test Kitchen app.

The team has been developing a prototype conversational AI service called Bard to test LaMDA. And today, they're making another advance by releasing it to trusted testers before releasing it to the public in the coming weeks.

Bard combines human understanding with huge language models' speed, precision, and uniqueness. In addition, it uses data collected from the internet to generate current and accurate answers. So if you're looking for a place to express your imagination and fuel your curiosity, look no further than Bard. Here, you can find everything from information on the latest discoveries from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to drills to help you improve your football striking.

It is being released alongside the researchers' lightweight version of LaMDA. This far more compact model necessitates fewer computational resources, allowing the researchers to scale to more users and get more feedback. In addition, researchers will use internal and external testing to guarantee that Bard's solutions are up to snuff in terms of quality, security, and relevance to the real world. The researchers are looking forward to this testing stage to continue learning and advancing Bard in quality and speed.

What is Bard? When can we access it?

Bard is a conversational AI chatbot developed by Google that draws inspiration from LaMDA and Google's AI chatbot. "Experimental conversational AI service" Google will "give it up to trustworthy testers ahead of making it more freely available to the public in the coming weeks," Pichai said.

It has yet to be opened to the general public if you ask how to sign up for it. However, compared to Google's cautious and drawn-out testing of LaMDA (which has lasted over two years), the pace of the Bard deployment seems positively breakneck. 

To give "new, high-quality responses," Bard "draws on information from the web," as the blog post puts it. It will function as ChatGPT currently does, providing detailed, conversational, and essay-style responses to questions. For example, Bard can "teach discoveries from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to a 9-year-old" or "learn more about the top strikers in football right now, and then get drills to better your talents," according to the blog post.

Conclusion

Google notes, however, that this version of LaMDA is "lightweight" and "needs substantially less computer power, enabling us to grow to more users, allowing for greater input." Unfortunately, running these models also demands a lot of computer power. Since too many individuals are attempting to utilise the service at once, this explains why it frequently experiences problems.

Furthermore, Google has also said it will add AI features to its search results. The blog post says, "Soon, you'll see AI-powered features, from people who play both piano and guitar, or delving deeper on a related topic, like how to get started as a novice".