Google Gemini

Submission 3,539

Part of a series on AI / Artificial Intelligence. [View Related Entries]

About

Google Gemini, formerly Bard, refers to an artificial intelligence chatbot program announced by Google in February 2023 called Bard. The program was speculated to be Google's rival to OpenAI's ChatGPT due to their projected similarities. Bard was initially described as an "experimental conversational AI service," which was portrayed to function like Google's search feature.

History

On February 4th, 2023, Google's CEO Sundar Pichai published a blog^[1] post to Google's "technology" board titled, "An important next step on our AI journey." The post announced the company's foray into an "experimental conversational AI service" called Bard which would be powered by the company's Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA).^[1] Bard was portrayed to function similarly to Google's search function, as in, a user would type a question or prompt to Bard and be provided with an answer that omitted search results.^[1] The blog post specifically stated:

Bard seeks to combine the breadth of the world’s knowledge with the power, intelligence and creativity of our large language models. It draws on information from the web to provide fresh, high-quality responses. Bard can be an outlet for creativity, and a launchpad for curiosity, helping you to explain new discoveries from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to a 9-year-old, or learn more about the best strikers in football right now, and then get drills to build your skills.

Google's example of a Bard prompt was "what new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope can I tell my 9 year old about?" (shown below).

The blog post also announced that Google was "releasing it initially with our lightweight model version of LaMDA. This much smaller model requires significantly less computing power, enabling us to scale to more users, allowing for more feedback."^[1]

Online Reactions

On February 6th, 2023, CEO Sundar Pichai posted to Twitter^[2] about the Bard announcement blog post, earning roughly 3,800 likes in two hours. The blog post's publicity was amplified by other tweets^[3]^[4] from news outlets and journalists sent on February 6th. Also, news outlet The Verge^[5] published an article about the Bard announcement, citing a precursor article^[6] of theirs titled, "Google is freaking out about ChatGPT," which was published in late January 2023. Originally reported on by the New York Times,^[7] after ChatGPT's prominent rise to notoriety in January 2023, Google executives were allegedly fearful of OpenAI, "the first notable threat in decades to Google’s $149 billion search business."^[7]

On February 6th, 2023, some memes surfaced about Google's announcement of Bard, such as a tweet sent by Twitter^[8] user dogeofficialceo on that day which showed the Anime Girl Hiding From a Terminator as the two companies, earning 60 likes in two hours (shown below, left). Later that day, Twitter^[9] user openaicommunity made fun of the name "Bard" in a tweet that received 87 likes in one hour (shown below, right).