Alphabet, the parent company of Google, has announced the rollout of its chatbot named Bard in the European Union and Brazil. Bard is intended to compete with ChatGPT, as tech companies intensify their efforts to dominate the field of artificial intelligence (AI).
According to Alphabet, Bard is now available in 27 EU countries and Brazil, and it supports 40 additional languages, including Arabic, Chinese, German, Hindi, and Spanish. The chatbot utilizes data from Google Search to provide users with various functionalities.
In a blog post, Bard’s product lead Jack Krawczyk and vice president Amarnag Subramanya emphasized the role of curiosity and imagination in human creativity. They stated that Bard was designed to explore curiosity, enhance imagination, and help users bring their ideas to fruition by not only answering questions but also assisting in their development.
Alphabet has introduced new features to Bard, enabling users to upload photos, convert text to speech, revisit previous conversations, and share chats with friends.
The initial testing phase of Bard began in the United States and the United Kingdom, and now the expanded rollout includes the EU and Brazil.
Elon Musk’s recent announcement about the launch of AI company xAI to challenge OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, coincided with Bard’s expanded release. Musk has accused OpenAI of exhibiting bias favoring “woke” politics.
In response to the growing competition in the AI sector, Google’s rival Microsoft, which invested $10 billion in OpenAI earlier this year, has been integrating AI capabilities across its products, including its search engine Bing.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is reportedly developing a commercial version of its AI model LLaMA to compete with OpenAI and Google, according to sources familiar with the matter cited by the Financial Times.
The introduction of Bard, along with the developments from xAI, Microsoft, and Meta, reflects the increasing focus and investment in AI technologies as companies strive to lead the AI landscape and offer advanced AI-powered solutions.
