Google Bard, the tech giant's generative AI chatbot and competitor to ChatGPT, is receiving an update aimed at significantly enhancing its capabilities. The company asserts that Bard will now be powered by Gemini, Google's latest and most advanced AI model, providing the chatbot with improved reasoning, planning, understanding, and other functionalities.
Gemini comes in three versions—Ultra, Pro, and Nano—allowing it to run on various platforms from mobile devices to data centers.
The rollout of Gemini to Bard will occur in two phases. Initially, Bard will be upgraded with a specially tuned version of Gemini Pro. Next year, Google will introduce Bard Advanced, giving users access to the best AI model, starting with Gemini Ultra.
The Bard version with Gemini Pro will first be available in English in more than 170 countries and territories globally, with additional languages and countries, including the EU and U.K., to follow soon.
Before the public launch, Gemini Pro underwent a series of industry-standard benchmarks, outperforming GPT-3.5 in six out of eight tests, including tasks measuring multitask language understanding and grade school math reasoning. However, considering GPT-3.5 is over a year old, this launch may be more of a catch-up than an outperformance, as pointed out by TechCrunch's Kyle Wiggers.
The improvements aim to make Bard more capable in areas such as understanding and summarizing content, reasoning, brainstorming, writing, and planning.
"This is the most significant quality improvement for Bard since its launch," said Sissie Hsiao, VP and GM of Assistant and Bard at Google.
Gemini Pro will initially power text-based prompts in Bard, but it will expand to multimodal support (text and images) in the coming months.
In 2024, Bard Advanced will debut, offering a new experience powered by Gemini's most capable model, Ultra. Gemini Ultra can understand and act on various types of information, including text, images, audio, video, and code, with multimodal reasoning capabilities. It can also comprehend, explain, and generate high-quality code in popular programming languages and understand audio and video content.
Google plans to launch a trusted tester program for Bard Advanced before opening it up more broadly in early 2024. The company will also conduct additional safety checks before the official launch.
This update follows several recent improvements to Bard, including features such as answering questions about YouTube videos, integration with Google apps like Gmail and Docs, and cross-checking answers for accuracy.
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