Google has announced its new AI chatbot, Bard, which is set to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The name Bard refers to the poet and playwright William Shakespeare, known as the “bard of Avon.”

Bard is built on the LaMDA language model and is described as a “combination of knowledge about the world with the power and intelligence of Google’s large language models.” The service will first be provided exclusively to a small number of testers, but will become more widely available to the public in the following weeks.

Google plans to create tools and APIs to make it easier for third-party developers to create AI applications with the new technology. The company notes that the first version of Bard will be a lighter version of LaMDA, requiring less computing power, with the possibility of upgrading to a full-fledged model in the future. CEO Sundar Pichai stated that users of Google services could expect to receive complex topics in an easy-to-understand format with Bard’s help.

Google’s AI initiative has three parts — Bard, new AI capabilities in Google search, and APIs for AI application development. The company’s AI-driven LaMDA language model is set to play a crucial role in this endeavour, and Bard is based on a variant of LaMDA. 

The battle for the future of internet search is heating up between Google and Microsoft, with Microsoft’s recently announced integration of ChatGPT into its Bing search engine. Microsoft has invested heavily in OpenAI, with a billion-dollar investment in 2019 and recently extended the partnership with more investment. On the other hand, Google is focusing on its AI initiative, with Bard as one of its central components.