FEBRUARY 12, 2023
Google announced its AI-powered chatbot Bard a few days back and made a lot of headlines. In its very first demo, Bard made a factual error, which was noticed and called out. In addition to this, at Google’s press conference held at Paris, a presenter couldn’t go ahead with the demo due to the phone being misplaced. Following the two incidents, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, lost USD 100 million in market value. And now, looks like Google’s employees aren’t happy with the way the Bard announcement was handled and are reportedly calling it ‘rushed, botched, and un-Googley’.
Google employees criticize CEO Sundar Pichai
As per a CNBC report, several Google employees are criticizing CEO Sundar Pichai for the way the AI chatbot Bard announcement was handled. The publication accessed several messages and memes that show Google employees expressing their thoughts on the Bard announcement on their internal forum Memegen.
The employees, as per the report, were discussing that the announcement was ‘rushed, botched and un-Googley’. The report also mentions how employees are calling out the company’s leadership, ‘most notably the CEO Sundar Pichai’. As per CNBC, the internal forum, which is usually a positive space full of fun and games, took a ‘serious tone’ this week with employees feeling ‘dissatisfied and embarrassed’ at the way the Bard announcement was handled.
Google Bard’s factual error
Earlier this week, Google Bard was in the news for making a factual error in an advertisement meant to promote the new AI chatbot in town. In the advertisement shared by Google on Twitter, Bard is asked to name some new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope. In its response, Bard mentions in one of the points that the telescope took the very first pictures of a planet outside of our own solar system.
“JWST took the very first pictures of a planet outside of our own solar system. These distant worlds are called “exoplanets.” Exo means from outside,” Bard answered.
However, that is not the case. As per NASA, the first image of an exoplanet was taken in the year 2004. The error by Google’s Bard was reported by Reuters.
Google’s Paris press conference goofup
The error in Google’s demo video was called out just when the company’s much-awaited press conference in Paris was going on. At the event, that was being live-streamed, a presenter walked on stage to give the demo of a new Lens feature. However, the demo phone was missing from the event and the presenter couldn’t go ahead with the presentation. Even though the speaker handled the situation with as much grace as possible, the entire scenario made people wonder if Google is indeed losing sleep over the new players in the market. Moreover, the even’t video was taken down by Google afterwards.
It has been reported for quite some time that Google had been losing sleep over ChatGPT, the AI-powered chatbot that aims to completely change the way people browse the internet. In an attempt to compete with ChatGPT, Google introduced Bard.
Meanwhile, Microsoft also introduced a new version of its search engine, Bing, that uses the same technology as ChatGPT and will be focused on providing a better search experience.
Courtesy/Source: INDIA TODAY
