Google’s new chatbot, Bard, has caused Google’s market value to drop by a whopping $100 billion due to an embarrassing error. In a promotional video, Bard was asked a question about the James Webb space telescope and replied with incorrect information. The blunder has sparked criticism and caused shares in Alphabet Inc, Google’s parent company, to fall by 9%.
The video, which has been viewed over a million times, shows Bard answering the question: “What new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope can I tell my 9 year old about?” However, the AI machine gave multiple answers, including that the JWST took the first photograph of another planet outside of the solar system, which was actually captured by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in 2004.
Bard is an experimental conversational AI service, powered by LaMDA. Built using our large language models and drawing on information from the web, it’s a launchpad for curiosity and can help simplify complex topics → https://t.co/fSp531xKy3 pic.twitter.com/JecHXVmt8l
— Google (@Google) February 6, 2023
Gil Luria, a senior software analyst at D.A. Davidson, commented that Google seemed to have “fallen asleep” on implementing AI technology into their search product. He also noted that the company’s recent rush to catch up in search led to the blunder and the presentation of the Bard feature was rushed.
Investors were reportedly disappointed with the presentation, which lacked the refinement and polish of competitors such as Microsoft’s popular chatbot, ChatGPT. Tech experts believe that Google needs to improve its technology to match the standards set by its competitors.
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