They are regularly accused – perhaps rightly – of having been launched too early to satisfy the appetite of investors or not to leave the biggest slice of the pie to OpenAI and ChatGPT. Nevertheless, after that of Microsoft integrated into Bing, it is Google’s conversational AI, Bard, which comes out of the ground. The Mountain View firm announced that after having offered this new tool to a few trusted testers, it is opening up to the general public.
But there are many conditions to meet at the moment for anyone who wants to try it. This general public launch is accompanied by a waiting list on which users must register before receiving the sesame (an email) inviting them to come and test the product. And that’s not all: for now, the chatbot is only available in the United States and the United Kingdom. The company has not communicated on a possible release date in France.
Apart from the infatuation — exaggerated? — aroused by these AIs, Bard arouses curiosity by using its own language model (LLM), called LaMDA and developed directly by Google, when the Microsoft and Bing chatbots are based on GPT, the OpenAI model. During Bard’s initial presentation, an error had slipped into the chatbot’s responses, causing Google’s stock market to slip. The firm’s blog post also remains cautious about the capabilities of the chatbot, stating on several occasions that errors can occur and that user feedback is important to improve the experience. A way of anticipating criticism of this launch, which many experts consider too early.
For those in a hurry, remember that the impossibility of access to Bard from France can be circumvented via a VPN. You must then go to the dedicated page which, unlike Microsoft with the Bing chatbot, is not directly integrated into the search engine. For the moment…