Google AI chatbot Bard sends shares plummeting after it gives wrong answer

Google’s response to ChatGPT has got off to an embarrassing start after its new artificial intelligence-powered chatbot gave a wrong answer in a promotional video, as investors wiped more than $100bn (£82bn) off the value of the search engine’s parent company, Alphabet.

The sell-off on Wednesday came amid investor fears that Microsoft, which is deploying an ChatGPT-powered version of its Bing search engine, will damage Google’s business. Alphabet stock slid by 9% during regular trading in the US but was flat after hours.

Experts pointed out that promotional material for Bard, Google’s competitor to Microsoft-backed ChatGPT, contained an error in the response by the chatbot to: “What new discoveries from the James Webb space telescope (JWST) can I tell my nine-year old about?”

Bard’s response – in a video demo posted online – includes an answer suggesting the JWST was used to take the very first pictures of a planet outside the Earth’s solar system, or exoplanets.

The error was picked up by experts including Grant Tremblay, an astrophysicist at the US Center for Astrophysics, who tweeted: “Not to be a ~well, actually~ jerk, and I’m sure Bard will be impressive, but for the record: JWST did not take ‘the very first image of a planet outside our solar system’”.

Bruce Macintosh, the director of University of California Observatories, tweeted: “Speaking as someone who imaged an exoplanet 14 years before JWST was launched, it feels like you should find a better example?”

Google said the error, first reported by Reuters, underlined the need for testing new systems. Bard has been released to a team of specialist testers and has yet to be rolled out to the public.

“This highlights the importance of a rigorous testing process, something that we’re kicking off this week with our trusted tester program,” a Google spokesperson said. “We’ll combine external feedback with our own internal testing to make sure Bard’s responses meet a high bar for quality, safety and groundedness in real-world information.”

Bard is based on a so-called large language AI model, a type of neural network, which mimics the underlying architecture of the brain in computer form. It is fed vast amounts of text from the internet in a process that teaches it how to generate responses to text-based prompts. However, this can also lead to the chatbot repeating errors from the information that it absorbs.

Google also gave a live-streamed presentation in Paris on Wednesday that did not include details of how and when it would integrate Bard into its core search function. A day earlier, Microsoft held an event in which it announced that it was launching a public version of its Bing search with ChatGPT functions integrated.

Gil Luria, a senior software analyst at DA Davidson, said: “While Google has been a leader in AI innovation over the last several years, they seemed to have fallen asleep on implementing this technology into their search product.

“Google has been scrambling over the last few weeks to catch up on search and that caused the announcement to be rushed and the embarrassing mess-up of posting a wrong answer during their demo.”

Alphabet, whose main business is Google, is coming off a disappointing fourth quarter as advertisers cut spending. Microsoft is a key backer of the company behind ChatGPT, the San Francisco-based OpenAI, and its move to integrate ChatGPT technology into its products including search has forced Google, also a big investor in AI, to take action.

“People are starting to question: is Microsoft going to be a formidable competitor now against Google’s really bread-and-butter business?” said King Lip, the chief strategist at BakerAvenue Wealth Management, which owns Alphabet and Microsoft shares.

Lip cautioned that concerns about Alphabet may be overblown, saying: “I think still Bing is a far, far cry away from Google’s search capabilities.”