Google has started giving users in the US and UK access to Google Bard, its answer to Bing and ChatGPT’s AI chat tools. The company is doing a gradual rollout through a waitlist at bard.google.com.
What Is Bard?
Bard is a generative AI. That means it will generate content for you based on prompts that you submit through a chatbot.
In today’s announcement (partially written with the help of Bard), the company suggested a variety of ways users might be able to take advantage of the AI tool:
“You can use Bard to boost your productivity, accelerate your ideas and fuel your curiosity. You might ask Bard to give you tips to reach your goal of reading more books this year, explain quantum physics in simple terms or spark your creativity by outlining a blog post.”
Is Bard an AI Search Tool?
Yes and no.
Bard is something of a complementary tool to Google’s search engine. While it is not directly integrated into Google Search, it is “designed so that you can easily visit Search to check its responses or explore sources across the web.”
Along with suggesting queries, you can immediately open a new tab with search results for a given query.
At the same time, Bard is not considered a direct part of Google search. Instead, the company suggests it will be adding other AI tools to its search engine in the future.
Bard Is In Early Stages
Throughout the announcement, Google repeatedly described Bard as an early experiment, As with Bing’s AI tools, Bard is likely to have some early quirks and weirdness as users get their hands on it.
Additionally, Google pointed out that the AI tool is far from perfect. It can get information wrong or phrase things in misleading ways. Some of these errors may be small. In Google’s example, Bard got the scientific name for a plant wrong – Zamioculcas zamiifolia, not Zamioculcas zamioculcas. However, the company cautions it may be inaccurate in other ways.
Still, it will be fun to see what Bard can do now that it is coming to the public.
