In Paris demo, Google scrambles to counter ChatGPT but ends up embarrassing itself

On Wednesday, Google held a highly anticipated press conference from Paris that didn’t ship the decisive transfer towards ChatGPT and the Microsoft-OpenAI partnership that many pundits expected. As a substitute, Google ran by way of a group of beforehand introduced applied sciences in a low-key presentation that included shedding an illustration cellphone.

The demo, which included references to many merchandise which can be nonetheless unavailable, occurred simply hours after somebody seen that Google’s commercial for its newly introduced Bard large language model contained an error concerning the James Webb House Telescope. After Reuters reported the error, Forbes noticed that Google’s inventory worth declined almost 7 p.c, taking about $100 billion in worth with it.

On stage in entrance of a small in-person viewers in Paris, Google Senior Vice President Prabhakar Raghavan and Google Search VP Liz Reid took turns displaying a collection of merchandise that included “multisearch,” an AI-powered visual search characteristic of Google Lens that lets customers search by taking an image and describing what they’d like to search out, an “Immersive View” characteristic of Google Maps that enables a 3D fly-through of main cities, and a brand new model of Google Translate, together with a smattering of minor bulletins.

Throughout her presentation on the “multisearch” characteristic, Reid launched a stay demo. After silence and a nervous chuckle, she continued, “We’re lacking the cellphone. Going to maneuver on, we will not discover the cellphone.” The second prompted confusion for some throughout the extremely anticipated press occasion from a trillion-dollar firm. After Reid’s demo, Raghavan joked, “Thanks Liz, and we’ll have to determine who stole your cellphone.”

However the huge information journalists had been anticipating from the occasion arrived Monday, two days earlier than the presentation. That day, Google announced Bard, a conversational AI mannequin it’s positioning towards OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s “New Bing.” The announcement on Monday got here as one thing of a shock, presumably a transfer designed to preempt a Microsoft AI convention that passed off on Tuesday. The back-and-forth appeared that the 2 firms are gearing up for a competitive war over generative AI, however thus far, the conflict has turn out to be extra of a one-sided dance as critics call out Google’s reticence to ship generative AI merchandise, regardless of pioneering most of the applied sciences behind them.

Raghavan spent a while going over Bard’s options throughout the Paris press convention, however he revealed nothing new, and Bard stays locked securely behind Google’s doorways. “We simply took our subsequent huge step by opening Bard as much as trusted testers this week,” stated Raghavan. “We’ll proceed to make use of suggestions from inner and exterior testing to verify it meets our excessive bar for high quality, security, and groundedness earlier than we launch it extra broadly.”

Regardless of Google’s slowness to market with a breakthrough generative AI product (that the general public can use), the story is not over but. Points with intellectual property and hallucinations in massive language fashions that create convincing falsehoods would possibly find yourself inflicting hassle for Microsoft, which is raring to leap in head-first utilizing OpenAI’s know-how.