Google Bard First Impressions — Will It Kill ChatGPT?

I was among the first people to get hands-on access to Bard. Here are my thoughts.

Screenshots by the author

Yesterday evening, I received an exciting email from Google — I was invited to be one of the first people to test Google Bard, Google’s soon-to-be-released AI chatbot.

Bard is Google’s answer to the wildly popular ChatGPT system from OpenAI, which has quickly become the fastest-growing app in history. Since ChatGPT launched late last year, OpenAI has continuously improved the system — their GPT-4 update last week was a major leap ahead in terms of the system’s capabilities.

Google, of course, does not want to be left in the lurch. That’s especially true since their major competitor in the search space, Microsoft’s Bing, already includes AI features driven by GPT-4. Loath to let another giant company eat their highly-lucrative search engine pie, Google is now rolling out Bard in an effort to compete.

So, how does Bard look? What’s it good at, and where does it struggle? And will it kill ChatGPT? Let’s explore.

Here’s a video that I made sharing some of my first impressions in the hours since I received my Bard invitation.