Bard, Google's ChatGPT, has arrived in Spain

The tool is available in Spanish and 40 other languages, but Basque will have to wait

ChatGPT already has a competitor in Spain. Google announced the arrival of Bard, its creative artificial intelligence tool, in July. It was presented at the beginning of the summer; The North American multinational had already launched in more than 180 countries. From now on, it will be available in the 27 member states of the European Union, which blocked its arrival due to "privacy issues related to the use of data" of users. So far, it's been available in English, Japanese, and Korean, and now it's available in Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Chinese, and 40 other languages. To be in Basque, Catalan and Galician, you will have to wait. "Right now Bard is able to respond in those languages, but we need to train it to respond responsibly," say its developers.

Like its Microsoft-funded rival, Bard is a conversational "chatbot", something like having a WhatsApp conversation where the interlocutor answers almost any question. Technically, both are part of what is called generative artificial intelligence, a branch of artificial intelligence where information is input and output is generated. More precisely, they are what experts call the "Large Language Model (LLM)" because they work with texts (other trains - such as the Midjourney or Dall-E ones - work with images). These models are fed millions of data, and that data is combined with complex statistical tools (neural networks) to produce results that allow them to pass medical exams, write books, or write a letter of recommendation for a job.

When it was introduced, its big advantage over its big rival is that it is connected to the internet, which means that the answers it offers are up-to-date. ChatGPT only manages information until 2021, although Open IA has enabled this feature in its paid version.

Another difference from the rival is that users can listen to the answer, "something especially useful if you want to hear the correct pronunciation of a word or if you want to hear a poem or a script", the famous search engine emphasizes. It is also synchronized with other company products, such as Gmail or Google Docs.

Errors and data privacy

"Meet Bard, the creative and useful collaborator that unleashes your imagination, boosts your productivity and brings your ideas to life," says the tool's home screen, which also offers several examples of what it can do: a three-day plan.

A trip to Rome, ten tips to avoid procrastination or tips to start yoga. He also warns of one of the Achilles' heels, "wrong answers when being in the experimental phase". These tools handle enormous amounts of data that have been entered under human supervision. Their answers depend on the training, according to the criteria used by the programmers. If they have racist or sexist prejudices, their answers will reflect that.

The other is data privacy, an obstacle that has delayed its arrival in Europe. "Your conversations with Bard may be processed by human reviewers for quality reasons. Do not include confidential information," Bard's home screen warns. ChatGPT also faced this problem, which was banned in Italy.

2023 is the year of Artificial Intelligence. The creation of Open IA in 2015 surprised the giants of the technology sector. Bard is Google's answer. The search engine company had been researching this area for years. They were the ones who revolutionized these tools thanks to an article published in 2017. Until then it was a technology used in automatic translators without much success. Previously, in 2014, they acquired DeepMind, the company founded by Denis Hasabis, one of this year's Frontiers of Knowledge Awards winners. And a year earlier they acquired DNNresearch, founded by Geoffrey Hinton, who was considered the "Godfather of Artificial Intelligence". The latter resigned as vice president of engineering, satisfied with the direction of the latest generation of tools and warned of the dangers they pose to humanity.

What is Bard?

Bard is an Artificial Intelligence system created by Google. It is a dialogue system; so you will be able to interact through regular messages. In these messages, you'll write something you want to know or do, and Bard will respond.

The search giant's AI is based on LaMDA, a powerful experimental language model designed by Google specifically for conversational applications. This model was in a very closed testing phase for a long time, as only a few people could access it.

For years, Google has undoubtedly been the leader in the Internet search market. However, this position has recently been threatened it has been done with the advent of AI models capable of providing information in conversation.