About 10 percent of Alphabet's market value, or $120 billion, was wiped out this week after Google introduced Bard, and the system gave a wrong answer to a simple question.
In a previous publication we had reported that a promotional Bard demo video, the software incorrectly answered a question. This caused Alphabet's share price to drop.
Microsoft's integration of OpenAI language models into its Bing search engine and Edge browser has sparked a race.
Microsoft wants to acquire a share to Google's search monopoly by offering a better search engine that uses OpenAI's ChatGPT to answer queries in a conversational way rather than displaying simple lists of links to relevant web pages.
Google appears to have fallen behind but isn't about to give up, after hitting its first hurdle with the launch of Bard on Wednesday.
We should all be careful here.
Although language models can generate text that appears to be coherent and grammatically correct, they also display false information. The glitch in Bard's demo reminded us of the accuracy and reliability issues we'll face the day after tomorrow.
"This underlines the importance of a rigorous testing process, which we are starting this week with the Trusted Tester program," a Google spokesperson told The Register.
"We will combine external feedback with our own internal testing to ensure that Bard's responses meet a high level of quality, and security in real-world information."
