Google launches its AI chatbot Bard in Europe
Google opening Bard to 180 countries including India without a waitlist.
Alphabet, the parent company of Google, is launching its artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Bard in Europe and Brazil on Thursday (July 13). This is the product's biggest expansion since its February launch. The chatbot is a rival toMicrosoft-backedChatGPT.
Bard and ChatGPT, bothgenerate human-like answers with ease using generative artificial intelligence. The chatbots are capable of holding conversations with users and can answer myriad prompts.
The launch of ChatGPT last year proved to be a blockbuster with it being the first such product to be available to the masses.
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The excitement around AI has made many companies jump on the bandwagon. Many of them have invested billions hoping that the investment would translate into advertising and cloud revenue. This week, Elon Musk also launched his long-teased intelligence startup xAI. The team involved in the startup includes several former engineers at Google, Microsoft and OpenAI.
New features in Bard
Google has also now added new features to Bard, which apply worldwide.
"Starting today, you can collaborate with Bard in over 40 languages, including Arabic, Chinese, German, Hindi and Spanish," Google senior product director Jack Krawczyk said in a blog post.
"Sometimes hearing something out loud can help you approach your idea in a different way ... This is especially helpful if you want to hear the correct pronunciation of a word or listen to a poem or script."
Krawczyk said that Bard users can now change the tone and style of the chatbot's responses to simple, long, short, professional or casual. The users can pin or rename conversations. They would also be able to export code to more places and use images in their prompts.
Local privacy regulators in Europe have held up Bard's launch in the EU. Krawczyk said that Google had since then met the regulators to reassure them oftransparency, choice and control.
In a briefing with journalists, Amar Subramanya, engineering vice president of Bard, added that users could opt out of their data being collected.
In the US, Google is facing fresh class action over alleged misuse of users' personal information for training its artificial intelligence system.
Subramanya declined to comment on whether there were plans to develop a Bard app.
"Bard is an experiment," he added. "We want to be bold and responsible."
Nonetheless, the novelty appeal may be waning, with recent web user numbers showing that monthly traffic to ChatGPT's website and unique visitors declined for the first time ever in June.
(With inputs from agencies)
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