By Oyintari Ben
The artificial intelligence chatbot, Bard from Alphabet (GOOGL.O) will launch in Europe and Brazil on Thursday, marking the product’s largest rollout since its February introduction and pitting it against Microsoft’s (MSFT.O) supported rival ChatGPT.
With the help of generative artificial intelligence, human-sounding programmes like Bard and ChatGPT can converse with users and respond to a wide range of questions. The products have sparked cautious excitement across the globe.
Companies have hopped on the AI bandwagon and committed billions of dollars in the hopes of boosting cloud and advertising revenue. The billionaire Elon Musk also unveiled his much-anticipated artificial intelligence business, xAI, earlier this week. The team at xAI includes several former Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI experts.
Bard now has new features that are applicable globally from Google as well.
Google Senior Product Director Jack Krawczyk announced in a blog post that “starting today, you can collaborate with Bard in over 40 languages, including Arabic, Chinese, German, Hindi and Spanish.”
“Sometimes hearing something out loud can help you approach your idea in a different way … This is very useful if you want to hear a word spoken correctly or hear a poem or play read aloud.
Users can now alter the tone and manner of Bard’s comments, according to him, choosing from simple, long, short, professional, or casual options.
They can use graphics in prompts, export code to other locations, and pin or rename discussions.
Local privacy regulators had delayed Bard’s introduction in the EU. Since then, according to Krawczyk, Google has met with the watchdogs to reassure them on matters pertaining to openness, choice, and control.
Amar Subramanya, engineering vice president of Bard, stated that customers might choose not to have their data collected during a press briefing.
A new class action lawsuit against Google has been filed in the United States over the alleged exploitation of customer data used to train its AI system.
Regarding whether there were any plans to create a Bard app, Subramanya opted not to answer.
“Bard is an experiment,” he continued. “We want to be courageous and accountable.”
However, current Web user statistics indicate that monthly traffic to ChatGPT’s website and unique visitors fell for the first time ever in June, suggesting that novelty appeal may be eroding.
