A factual error in the first public demonstration of the Google AI chatbot Bard caused shares of parent company Alphabet to crash. Google only announced the text robot with artificial intelligence on Monday to counter initiatives from start-up OpenAI and Microsoft. On Wednesday night, however, it turned out that Bard was arguably nonsensical in his first demo.
An animated image (GIF) shared by Google on Twitter Monday showed Bard’s answer to the question, “What new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope can I tell my 9-year-old?” first-ever images of a planet outside our own solar system.”
Countering astronomers: Google AI is talking nonsense
However, some astronomers later pointed out that this is not true. The first photo of an exoplanet was taken in 2004. The image can also be seen on a NASA website.
Astrophysicist Grant Tremblay wrote on Twitter that he didn’t want to be an idiot and that he was sure Bard would be impressive. “But for the record, JWST didn’t take ‘the very first image of a planet outside our solar system'”. The researcher referred to a photo taken in 2004 by the European Southern Observatory ESO in Chile.
Google investors were disappointed
When Bard was introduced on Monday, Google itself pointed out that the system can also give incorrect answers. Still, investors were disappointed with Bard’s poor start. The share of the group fell by more than seven percent on Wednesday shortly before the stock market close.
The chatbot Bard is part of a major AI offensive by Google, with which the search engine giant mainly responds to the surprising success of the Californian start-up OpenAI and its text robot ChatGPT. OpenAI is closely tied financially to Google’s competitor Microsoft, which announced on Tuesday – krone.at reported – it would integrate ChatGPT into its hitherto moderately successful search engine Bing.
Source: Krone
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
