Alphabet and Microsoft Engage in Battle for Internet Dominance with New AI Offerings
Technology giants Alphabet Inc and Microsoft have once again entered into a race to dominate the internet sphere. Alphabet, the parent company of Google, recently unveiled its latest AI creation called Bard as a response to the highly popular AI chatbot, ChatGPT, developed by Microsoft-backed OpenAI. Both companies are vying for supremacy, reminiscent of the battles between Chrome and Internet Explorer or Gmail and Hotmail in the past.
ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence service developed by OpenAI, has taken the tech world by storm since its public release last year. People worldwide have been fascinated by the chatbot’s ability to generate a variety of content, including poems, novels, jokes, and film scripts. The service has the potential to revolutionize how consumers search for information and create content, thereby freeing up time for white-collar workers.
The offerings provided by Alphabet’s Bard and Microsoft’s ChatGPT are quite similar. Users will interact with these AI systems by inputting questions, requests, or prompts, and receive human-like responses in return. Both companies plan to integrate these AI tools into their respective search services, Bing and Google Search, which generate significant revenues for their businesses.
While both technologies excel at distilling complex information and multiple perspectives into easily digestible formats, there is one noticeable difference between Bard and ChatGPT. Bard has the capability to incorporate recent events into its responses, giving it an edge over its counterpart. It remains unclear how the two services will differentiate themselves, but Alphabet’s Bard will likely have access to a larger dataset. Bard draws information from the internet, while ChatGPT’s data goes only until 2021.
Bard is built on a language model for dialogue applications called LaMDA, which has garnered attention for its ability to generate text that appears sentient. However, claims of sentience have been debunked by experts and scientists. On the other hand, ChatGPT is powered by the GPT 3.5 series of language models, released by OpenAI in 2020. OpenAI acknowledges that ChatGPT may sometimes produce plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical answers.
While ChatGPT has been available for public use since November 2022, Bard is currently limited to a group of testers. However, Alphabet’s CEO Sundar Pichai has announced that Bard will be widely accessible in the coming weeks.
Since ChatGPT’s launch, numerous tech companies have embraced generative AI technology, and several startups are independently working on their own AI projects. Baidu, often referred to as China’s answer to Google, recently joined this frenzy by introducing its own AI known as Ernie.
With Alphabet and Microsoft competing fiercely to dominate the AI landscape, the battle for internet dominance is set to intensify. The advancements made by Bard and ChatGPT will undoubtedly shape the future of AI in search services, content creation, and productivity. As these technologies continue to evolve, users can expect new and innovative features that redefine our online experiences.
