Google's chatbot AI Bard was launched to the general public earlier in March. However, the initial response has not been favorable, as Bard hasn't offered the kind of detailed answers to questions that Microsoft's Bing Chat has provided. Indeed, Microsoft's head of Advertising and Web Services Mikhail Parakhin stated that Bard was "pretty far behind" Bing chat.
However, Bard may soon be able to better compete with Bing Chat, thanks to changing out its large language model. Currently, Bard uses the LaMDA model which has a relatively small data set. However, on the Hard Fork podcast from The New York Times (via Engadget), Google CEO Sundar Pichai stated that the chatbot will switch over to the larger PaLM model.
In fact, it may have happened already as Pichai stated that the switch from LaMDA to PaLM could occur "maybe as this goes live". He added that PaLM "will bring more capabilities, be it in reasoning, coding."
Pichai also commented on Bard's development as a whole saying:
We are all in very, very early stages. We will have even more capable models to plug in over time. But I don’t want it to be just who’s there first, but getting it right is very important to us.
There's also been a lot of debate over how chatbots like Bard, Bing Chat, and ChatGPT should be used and regulated. Indeed, the non-profit research group, the Center for AI and Digital Policy recently asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate ChatGPT's parent company OpenAI for possible violations of consumer protection laws. On the podcast, Pichai stated it was "too important" to get regulations in place for AI, but added, "It’s also too important an area not to regulate well."
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