by Google published an online ad for its new AI chatbot Bard in which it gave an incorrect answer.
Company unveiled its long-awaited rival to ChatGPT this weekand has launched a marketing blitz to prepare the public for its full rollout in the coming weeks.
A promotional tweet with a short GIF describes Bard as a “curiosity launch pad” that will simplify complex topics.
Google believes it will change the way people search the web as it can provide more detailed and conversational answers to questions rather than just a list of websites and links.
The question Bard was asked in the ad was, “What new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) can I tell my nine-year-old?”
One of the answers was that JWST was used to take the first pictures of a planet outside of Earth’s solar system.
Unfortunately for Bard, the first images of such exoplanets were indeed taken in 2004 by the Very Large Telescope.
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It’s a tricky mistake on the part of the chatbot, as one of the main concerns about these so-called big language models is whether their answers are as accurate as they are realistic.
OpenAIs ChatGPTwhich was launched to much fanfare at the end of last year, sometimes proves to talk just as confidently when it gets things wrong as it does when it does things right.
Bard and Microsoft’s new Bing chatbotalso announced this week, both are designed to solve this problem by providing quotes and keeping up to date with current events in real time.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ad, which had been viewed more than a million times at the time of writing.
The flaw was spotted just hours before senior Google executives hosted an event in Paris where the tech giant unveiled more plans to expand the role of AI in its products.
Among them was a new “immersive view” for the Maps app, which allows users to point their phone camera at an area and display Google Street View-style icons and infographics as a digital overlay.
It’s available in a limited number of cities, including London and New York, to begin with.
Google is also increasing the number of indoor locations where Maps users can access augmented reality directions – again using their phone’s camera – by bringing the feature to airports, stations and shopping malls in a number of new cities, including London.
