Google’s parent company has announced the rollout of its chatbot rival to ChatGPT in the European Union and Brazil, as tech firms ramp up their competition to dominate artificial intelligence.
Bard is now available in 27 EU countries and Brazil, as well as 40 new languages, including Arabic, Chinese, German, Hindi and Spanish, Alphabet said on Thursday.
“Curiosity and imagination are the driving forces behind human creativity,” Bard’s product lead Jack Krawczyk and vice president Amarnag Subramanya said in a blog post.
“Whether it’s a child inventing a game, friends dreaming up their next adventure, or an entrepreneur coming up with a new business idea, our ability to imagine new possibilities is one of our most innate human qualities. That’s why we created Bard: to help you explore that curiosity, augment your imagination and ultimately get your ideas off the ground – not just by answering your questions, but by helping you build on them.”
Alphabet said it had also updated the chatbot with new functions that will allow users to upload photos, convert text to speech, go back to past conversations, and share chats with friends.
Alphabet first unveiled Bard, which relies on data from Google Search, in February, when it invited users in the United States and the United Kingdom to test the chatbot.
Bard’s expanded rollout comes hours after Elon Musk announced the launch of AI company xAI to challenge ChatGPT creator OpenAI, which the billionaire has accused of being biased in favour of “woke” politics.
In a statement on its website, xAI said the goal of the new company would be to “understand the true nature of the universe”.
Google rival Microsoft, which announced a $10bn investment in OpenAI in January, has been working to integrate AI functions across its products, including the search engine Bing.
Meta, the owner of Facebook, is also working on a commercial version of its AI model LLaMA to compete with OpenAI and Google, the Financial Times reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.
