Barely a full business week since its debut, Googleโs freshly unveiled artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Bard has already made a massive impact on the worldโs third largest tech company. Just not in the way theyโd intended.
After the ChatGPT rival served up inaccurate information during a promotional video, fuelling concerns it was falling behind to the Microsoft-backed startup OpenAI, a major selloff of shares in Google parent company Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOGL) occurred, wiping out approximately US$100 billion (AU$144 billion) of its market value.
This represents Alphabetโs biggest stock price drop in three months.
A Google spokesperson publicly stated: โThis highlights the importance of a rigorous testing process, something that weโre kicking off this week with our Trusted Tester program.โ
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โWeโll combine external feedback with our own internal testing to make sure Bardโs responses meet a high bar for quality, safety and groundedness in real-world information.โ
In related news, Microsoft has unveiled a new iteration of the Bing search engine and Edge browser that leverages the tech developed by OpenAI. The corporation helmed by Satya Nadella plans to invest several more billion on this front.
Itโs becoming increasingly clear the likes of Google Bard and OpenAIโs ChatGPT isnโt just where the money lies. This is indeed the future.
At the time of this writing, Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOGL) is trading at US$99.37.
