Is Google's Bard the chatbot of the future? Early adopters weigh in

This week, Google is launching its AI platform Bard to the public, starting with tests in the U.S. and the U.K. While the company is warning users that the platform may make mistakes with some answers, it is officially allowing people to sign up for the generative AI product at bard.google.com. Google plans to expand availability over time to more countries and languages. In a blog post titled "Try Bard and share your feedback," Sissie Hsiao, product vice president, and Eli Collins, research vice president, encourage users to use Bard to boost their productivity, accelerate their ideas, and fuel their curiosity.

To ensure that conversations between users and the AI don't spin out of control, Google is putting in place some guardrails. The company said it would cap the number of exchanges in a dialogue "to try to keep interactions helpful and on topic." However, it won't limit the number of daily chats, a spokesperson said. Bard will display three different drafts to each response, according to the company.

Google has been testing its LaMDA technology in the Bard chatbot and on search pages since late 2022. In January, the company announced the product following the introduction of OpenAI's ChatGPT technology, which has since been integrated into a limited version of Microsoft's search engine Bing. Google was criticized by employees and investors after Bard's initial rollout, which appeared rushed to compete with Microsoft's Bing integration of ChatGPT.

Google warns users that Bard is an experimental product that may give "inaccurate or inappropriate responses." A pop-up display says, "Bard is an experiment," and users are directed to use the "Google It" feature to fact-check Bard's responses if they're in doubt. Text also appears alongside results indicating that the information "doesn't represent Google's views." Google executives have asked all employees to help fix Bard's wrong answers in a companywide effort. Bard queries will include a “thumbs up” and “thumbs down" option to solicit feedback