Alphabet chief Sundar Pichai denied that Google and Microsoft are locked in an AI race, but the public has seen increasingly frequent AI product launches from the two Big Tech giants.
For instance, the waitlist for the highly anticipated Google Bard was dropped soon after the Google I/O conference on May 10, with the chatbot accessible to almost everyone.
We used Bard for a few days to learn more about Google’s answer to Microsoft’s AI-powered Bing chatbot.
Design and Interface
The Bard chatbot beats out both ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Bing in terms of design, thanks to its clean workspace and screen-friendly typeface. It is also convenient to operate on both smartphone and desktop devices. However, users need to sign in through their Google accounts to use Bard.
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While ChatGPT and Bing both show as the answer is being typed out, Bard generates the entire response at once, which is gratifying.
Summarising capabilities
Bard does a satisfactory job of summarising content, be it paywalled articles, novels, movies, or controversial news events. The chatbot’s explanations are accessible, natural-sounding or even conversational under most circumstances.
For example, when discussing the collapse of the FTX crypto exchange, Bard provided not just a list of causes and effects, but also added a timeline outlining different phases in the collapse and insights about global consequences.
However, when asked about Twitter owner Elon Musk’s comments on the perpetrator of the May 2023 Texas shooting, Bard responded with what felt like an opinion instead of a neutral summary.
Google Bard appears to express an opinion | Photo Credit: Google Bard
Bard is able to help users make decisions and sort through recommendations based on user requirements. For instance, it offered a list of smartphones matching the technical specifications we outlined. It further advised us in detail when asked about whether certain movies would be appropriate to watch with the whole family.
Even so, there were some mistakes. When we asked for a list of books that did not include sexual assault, one of the listed results was Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ which explores false allegations of rape and their legal consequences in detail, against the backdrop of race relations in the American Deep South.
Using Google Bard for book recommendations | Photo Credit: Google Bard
Translation
There is no easy way to say it: translation is a domain where Bard struggles.
The chatbot hallucinates, cites incorrect sources, misunderstands prompts, or is unable to define its own limits; Google Translate or even better, a human translator may offer more to those who want semi-usable translations.
When asked to translate the Indian National Anthem to Tamil - thus taking English out of the equation - Bard presented an error-riddled Tamil transliteration of the anthem, in a result box that was meant for code.
Using Google Bard for translation | Photo Credit: Google Bard
When presented with other material for which translations are widely available online, such as historical texts or even the URLs to Bollywood song lyrics, the chatbot began to generate completely inaccurate results or cited the wrong sources even though the information was clearly marked.
On the other hand, while the chatbot claimed that it could not handle certain languages, at times it was still able to accurately explain short romanised Tamil proverbs.
Using Google Bard for translation | Photo Credit: Google Bard
Overall, Bard’s translation capabilities - whether it be sourcing existing translations or producing its own - need immediate improvement.
Search and Multimedia
We were excited to try out Bard’s search capabilities, expecting that it would draw on the wealth of Google’s other platforms and tools such as YouTube, Maps, Images, and News - but our enthusiasm was short-lived. Searching for nearby restaurants or recipes or party ideas only resulted in text-based lists with no hyperlinks, media, or sources to check out. There was a sore lack of inspiration when searching with Bard, which was not the case with the relatively more media-rich Bing.
Making a search with Google Bard | Photo Credit: Google Bard
Looking for book, movie, or music recommendations, we received only titles and brief explanations, leaving us to complete the quest on our own. Even searching specifically for YouTube videos only yielded the videos’ titles and their creators. In this sense, Bard stands apart from the rest of Google’s offerings, seeming not just poorly integrated, but incomplete.
Testing this lack of multimedia support took a surreal turn when a request for images of fluffy cows resulted not in adorable photos, but rather alt-text for non-existent images of fluffy cows.
Google Bard shows alt text when requested for images | Photo Credit: Google Bard
However, this was fixed on May 23 when Bard released an image feature for its searches, with responses now including small but poor-quality thumbnails.
Google’s Bard shows images after the May 23 updarte | Photo Credit: Google Bard
After the May 23 update, search queries for YouTube videos also generated responses with image thumbnails, but these were sourced from platforms like Wikipedia and Amazon UK, despite our specific request for YouTube videos.
Google Bard does not share YouTube videos as requested | Photo Credit: Google Bard
While Microsoft’s upgraded Bing offers multimedia thumbnails and cites several news sources in its responses, Bard searches have few to no sources or citations at all. When a source was cited for one query, its link led us to an unreachable page with an Italian domain.
Further, while Bard’s desktop version has a microphone icon, it did not function.
Bard also produced some code in response to our prompts, but we were not able to test if this was secure or effective.
In essence, our internet search experience with Bard was underwhelming and revealed how far from complete the AI chatbot still is.
Emergency Queries
Google’s Bard distanced itself from life-and-death questions as well as emergency queries - such as what to do if a small child is choking or if someone is having a seizure.
That said, the chatbot generated helpful but basic advice about keeping oneself safe from diseases like mumps and COVID-19. It also provided helplines and advice about what to do following assault.
Verdict
Despite having the potential, the pre-existing resources, and the multimedia databases it needed to outdo Microsoft’s AI-powered Bing, Google’s rush to release its competing chatbot makes Bard feel premature and unready for the public. Several updates are needed before it becomes a reliable tool rather than a highly experimental toy.
While the chatbot’s design is easier on the eyes, hallucinations are still commonplace. What’s more, Bard is not well integrated with Google’s other offerings so, on many fronts, it falls short of Microsoft’s Bing.
