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Artificial intelligence
TechBig Tech

Google opens ChatGPT rival Bard to 180 countries, with plans to give internet search an AI upgrade

  • On the same day Google announced expanded access to its Bard chatbot, it revealed it is planning to integrate it into its dominant search engine
  • The move comes nearly three months after Microsoft started testing ChatGPT-powered search amid an AI arms race kicked off by the popular bot

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Sissie Hsiao, a vice-president at Google and general manager for Google Assistant’s business unit, speaks on-stage during the Google I/O keynote session at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California, on May 10, 2023. Photo: AFP
Associated Press
Google on Wednesday disclosed plans to infuse its dominant search engine with more advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technology, a drive that is in response to one of the biggest threats to its long-established position as the internet’s main gateway.
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The gradual shift in how Google’s search engine runs is rolling out three months after Microsoft’s Bing search engine started to tap into technology similar to that which powers the artificially intelligent chatbot ChatGPT, which has created one of Silicon Valley’s biggest buzzes since Apple released the first iPhone 16 years ago.
Google, which is owned by Alphabet, already has been testing its own conversational chatbot called Bard. That product, powered by technology called generative AI that also fuels ChatGPT, has only been available to people accepted from a wait list. But Google announced on Wednesday that Bard will be available to all comers in more than 180 countries and more languages beyond English.

Bard’s multilingual expansion will begin with Japanese and Korean before adding about 40 more languages.

Now Google is ready to test the AI waters with its search engine, which has been synonymous with finding things on the internet for the past 20 years and serves as the pillar of a digital advertising empire that generated more than US$220 billion in revenue last year.

“We are at an exciting inflection point,” Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai told a packed developers conference in a speech peppered with one AI reference after another. “We are reimagining all our products, including search.”

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More AI technology will be coming to Google’s Gmail with a “Help Me Write” option that will produce lengthy replies to emails in seconds, and a tool for photos called “Magic Editor” that will automatically doctor pictures.

The AI transition will begin cautiously with the search engine that serves as Google’s crown jewel.

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