Alphabet, the parent company of Google, lost US$100 billion (AU$144 billion) in market value after its Bard AI tool made a hash of answering a question at its launch event.
In a promotional tweet, Google posted a GIF video of Bard answering a relatively simple question.
Bard was asked “What new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) can I tell my 9-year old about?”
Amongst other things, it replied that the JWST took the very first pictures of a planet outside our solar system.
However, space boffins at Reuters were quick to point out that the first pictures of a planet outside our solar system were taken by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in 2004.
Bard is an experimental conversational AI service, powered by LaMDA. Built using our large language models and drawing on information from the web, it’s a launchpad for curiosity and can help simplify complex topics → https://t.co/fSp531xKy3 pic.twitter.com/JecHXVmt8l
— Google (@Google) February 6, 2023
Google debuted its Bard AI tool the day after Microsoft held an event announcing that it was integrating a more advanced version of ChatGPT into its Bing search engine.
A Google spokesperson said that the error was, in fact, not a bad thing at all as it provided its testing program with more feedback.
“This highlights the importance of a rigorous testing process, something that we’re kicking off this week with our Trusted Tester program,” they said.
“We’ll combine external feedback with our own internal testing to make sure Bard’s responses meet a high bar for quality, safety and groundedness in real-world information.”
The markets, however, were not convinced at Alphabet shares slid as much as nine per cent in regular trading. Microsoft’s shares rose by around three per cent.
Does this mean that the AI wars are over before they really began? Far from it. While Microsoft’s ChatGPT integration with Bing is an important step, it is prudent to remember that no one uses Bing.
It also remains unclear how AI-generated search results will play with search advertising, which is a huge money spinner for Google and many other companies.
