Google’s Bard now available in US, UK

Google’s Bard, its AI chatbot and answer to the popular ChatGPT, is now available for users in the United States and the United Kingdom to access.

Calling it “an early experiment that lets you collaborate with generative AI,” Google is beginning to open access to their AI chatbot in the US and the UK through a sign-up system and will expand to more countries and languages over time.

Google says that it has “learned a lot” with its initial testing of Bard and will now move onto the process of improving the service via feedback from more people.

Bard is powered by a research large language model (LLM), specifically a lightweight and optimized version of LaMDA, and aims to boost both productivity and creativity through generative AI.

Like ChatGPT and other AI chatbots, you can ask Bard questions and get immediate feedback such as asking it to give you tips to reach your goal of reading more books this year (as seen below).

In its announcement, Google highlighted that while AI technology like Bard and other LLMs are exciting, they are not without their faults.

“Because they learn from a wide range of information that reflects real-world biases and stereotypes, those sometimes show up in their outputs. And they can provide inaccurate, misleading or false information while presenting it confidently. For example, when asked to share a couple suggestions for easy indoor plants, Bard convincingly presented ideas…but it got some things wrong, like the scientific name for the ZZ plant,” as mentioned on their blog post.

It also emphasized that they want to build Bard “responsibly,” reiterating that they continue to apply their AI Principles in developing Bard with a particular focus on “quality and safety.”

For now, access to Bard is only available for those in the US and the UK. We’ll keep tabs on when Bard users in the Philippines will gain access so stay tuned!