Google's foray into the realm of AI chatbots with the introduction of Bard ran into a few initial challenges, as it failed to rival the likes of Bing Chat and ChatGPT.
The launch turned out to be a disaster when a Google ad featuring Bard provided an incorrect answer causing a momentary 8% stock plummet.
However, at the I/O developer conference held last week, Google reintroduced Bard and garnered a more positive reception with its enhanced language model, quiver full of utilities and no price tag.
Firstly, Google has eliminated the waitlist and is making Bard available to users in more than 180 countries including Australia and across 40 different languages.
Powered by its proprietary PaLM 2 AI model, the company unveiled a new array of features, that can potentially give ChatGPT a run for its money.
Five avenues that Bard has edge over ChatGPT
Internet access
Google Bard stands out from OpenAI's ChatGPT due to its internet access feature, giving it a significant competitive edge in the battle of the AIs.
Unlike ChatGPT, whose training data stops in 2021, Bard is trained on a vast dataset that includes information from the internet, enabling it to provide comprehensive and informative answers.
App support
While ChatGPT lacks a dedicated mobile version, Google plans to integrate Bard into various Google apps and services, making it accessible to smartphone users.
This move aims to overcome the accessibility disadvantage faced by ChatGPT users who rely on smartphone browsers.
Voice and image response
While ChatGPT excels at generating text responses, it falls short in delivering images.
In contrast, Google Bard can provide images as part of its text responses.
Likewise, images can also be used as prompts, users can either use images directly or scan them using Google Lens to seek information.
Although this capability was showcased at the I/O event, it may still be gradually rolling out to users.
Furthermore, Google Bard also supports voice prompts, allowing users to input voice commands for convenience while multitasking.
Plugin support
Google Bard comes with a range of plugins, including Walmart, Spotify, Uber Eats, Adobe Firefly and various Google Apps.
While OpenAI introduced similar plugins for ChatGPT, they are exclusively accessible to ChatGPT Plus subscribers.
Better coding support
Bard outshines ChatGPT in the coding realm, supporting more than 20 programming languages, including C++, Python, Java, TypeScript and JavaScript. Google Bard assists professionals with code generation, explanation and debugging, surpassing ChatGPT's current capabilities. OpenAI's Codex may be better suited for similar purposes.