Google Bard, the search giant’s answer to ChatGPT, has officially flung open its doors to beta users – and we’ve managed to jostle our way to the front of the queue to have some lengthy conversations with the AI chatbot.
If you missed the news, Google Bard is now an open beta, which means anyone can now sign up for access with a personal Gmail account. That queue is now likely pretty long, but fortunately we’ve managed to get access – and have been having the time of our tech lives flinging questions at Google’s new AI-powered brain for our hands-on Google Bard review.
Google has been very cautious about Bard’s early prospects, calling it an “early experiment” and, with a slight nod to ChatGPT, stating that “they can provide inaccurate, misleading or false information while presenting it confidently”. That is the reality of today’s Large Language Models (LLMs), which Google says are more like “prediction engines” than replacements for Google Search.
But that doesn’t mean they also aren’t a lot of fun to play around, particularly when it comes to sparking creative ideas – and that’s exactly what we’ve been doing in the hours since Google Bard beta was opened up publicly for the first time.
If you’re keen to get a taste of what Bard can do before you get your own Beta access, have a good read of this regularly-updated liveblog with all our of favorite answers, mistakes and oddities from Google’s AI chatbot so far.
Before we get stuck into our fascinating conversations with Google Bard, here’s a reminder of how to get access.
If you have a personal Gmail account (work accounts aren’t currently compatible), you can now sign up for Google Bard waitlist. It isn’t yet clear how long that waitlist is, but even those who signed up 30 minutes after the opening of the public beta haven’t yet gained access, so there may be a slight wait.
While you do get a short poem from Bard to keep you amused, our early conversations are a bit more revealing about how Google’s chatbot compares to ChatGPT. Let’s get stuck into those…