By now, you’ve probably heard plenty about ChatGPT, the artificially intelligent chatbot that’s taken the world by storm, particularly the education world. Whether you’re all for its use in the classroom or terrified of its seemingly endless capabilities, the technology is nothing short of remarkable. And now it has a potential rival.
Over the past week, OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT, set a record for becoming the fastest-growing consumer application in history with an estimated 100 million monthly active users in January. To put it into perspective, it took TikTok nearly nine months after its global launch to reach 100 million, and Instagram 2.5 years, Reuters reports.
But with success comes competitors, and Google made sure not to hold off on joining the realm of generative AI. On Monday, the company debuted Bard, a service that will allow users to use artificial intelligence to produce answers in response to users’ commands. According to Google, it can help users better understand information ranging from new discoveries from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to who is currently the best striker in football.
“Bard seeks to combine the breadth of the world’s knowledge with the power, intelligence and creativity of our large language models,” wrote Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet. “It draws on information from the web to provide fresh, high-quality responses.”
The company also announced that AI features will soon be integrated into its search engine, allowing users to “distill complex information and multiple perspectives into easy-to-digest formats, so you can quickly understand the big picture and learn more from the web,” wrote Pichai.
For now, the service will be available only to a group of trusted testers before being available in the “coming weeks.”
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