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.
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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.
The Interface
Let’s begin with Bard’s interface. Upon receiving my invitation to test Bard, I clicked through to the app, accepted some Terms of Service, and got my first glimpse of Bard’s interface.
Like many Google products, Bard’s interface is clean and clutter-free. There’s a text window, a place to enter prompts, and not much else.
Notably, there doesn’t appear to be a chat history tab, as you get with ChatGPT. That means you can’t easily go back and retrieve your old Bard conversations. These conversations are apparently more ephemeral.
