Google launches a ChatGPT competitor to protect its search dominance as the bot battle begins

Bring on the prompts… Yesterday Google rolled out its response to the existential threat posed by OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Meet Bard. Google said its ChatGPT rival has been released to “trusted testers” and will be available to the public in the coming weeks. Bard, which is built on Google’s mighty language-processing model, LaMDA, pulls info from the web to craft “fresh, high-quality” responses. Google also announced plans for ChatGPT-like search features:

• Conversational search… minus the “hey, Google.” The company said it’ll soon integrate genAI into web search for queries with more than one right answer. Think: a package of narrative results that distill “complex information and multiple perspectives into easy-to-digest formats.”

May the best bot win… Google isn’t a newcomer to the AI game. It literally invented the “T” in ChatGPT (the “transformer” tech that powers it). But after ChatGPT was released free to the public, Google likely felt pressured to introduce Bard earlier than planned — and to protect its profit-puppy search biz. It has the upper hand since it already runs the go-to search engine, but competition’s steep:

• ChatGPT Plus: not a streaming service. Last week OpenAI announced a $20/month subscription for a premium version of ChatGPT (think: less downtime). It could set the standard for genAI monetization. And unlike Google, it doesn’t have ads… yet.
• Bing (plus ChatGPT): Microsoft, which has invested billions in OpenAI, said it plans to integrate genAI tools into all its products, and it’s reportedly on the cusp of adding ChatGPT to its search engine, Bing.