What is Google Bard?

Well it was coming wasn’t it? All this talk and excitement about Microsoft and ChatGPT, we all knew Google was cooking something up to cement their place as the number one search platform on the planet. Introducing Bard…

How Google Introduced Bard

In a blog post titled “An important next step on our AI journey” shared on February 6th, 2023, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, announced their experimental conversational AI service, powered by their Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA), called Bard was being opened up to trusted testers before being deployed to the public in the coming weeks.

Similar to ChatGPT, the AI tool seeks to provide conversational style responses to user queries. However, unlike ChatGPT, Bard is likely to have access to over 25 billion indexed web pages (possibly even the total number of web pages which is probably over 50 billion).

Sundar Pichai explains: “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.”

Google’s Recent History of AI

Google has a history of using Artificial Intelligence to improve its Search functionality.

BERT or Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, is an open source machine learning framework for natural language processing. It was designed to help computers understand the meaning of ambiguous language in text by establishing context through the surrounding text. This led Google Search to develop a more ‘common sense’ understanding of search queries which helped produce much better results for users.

BERT excels at:

• Answering questions

• Summarising topics

• Suggested sentences

• Autofilling search queries

• Conversational type responses

In 2018, Google launched BERT as an open source tool. In October 2019, it was announced that BERT would be applied to US search algorithms. In December of the same year, BERT was applied to over 70 languages.

MUM or Multitask Unified Model, is an evolution of BERT but 1,000 times more powerful. Its goal is simple: simplify the volume of searches a user has to make to answer one complex, multi-threaded question. Not only does MUM understand the complexities of language, it can generate it too. This makes searching on Google more akin to speaking face to face with an expert in the field you’re enquiring about.

In the announcement blog post, Pandu Nayak, Google Fellow and Vice President of Search, used the following example to demonstrate the power of MUM:

“Take this scenario: You’ve hiked Mt. Adams. Now you want to hike Mt. Fuji next fall, and you want to know what to do differently to prepare. Today, Google could help you with this, but it would take many thoughtfully considered searches — you’d have to search for the elevation of each mountain, the average temperature in the fall, difficulty of the hiking trails, the right gear to use, and more. After a number of searches, you’d eventually be able to get the answer you need.

But if you were talking to a hiking expert; you could ask one question — “what should I do differently to prepare?” You’d get a thoughtful answer that takes into account the nuances of your task at hand and guides you through the many things to consider.”

MUM is revolutionary because it can crawl through all the associated information it has on this topic and generate a relevant response for you. Not only this, but it doesn’t matter what language the original information is in. In this example you can assume there would be lots of information in Japanese. Traditionally, your English search term would generate English results - but with MUM, you are accessing information on Japanese websites without even knowing.

As if that wasn’t enough, MUM is multimodal which means it can understand information across different formats, from webpages to pictures to videos.

Have you ever searched a specific question on Google and gotten a YouTube video starting at 03:27 and when you click on it it answers exactly what you were looking for? That’s MUM.

What is Bard?

At the moment not much is known about Bard other than it is an AI chatbot to rival what we’ve already seen of ChatGPT. What we do know is that Bard will query information from the web to “provide fresh, high-quality responses”. Alongside Bard, Google will be adding more AI-powered features to Search allowing it to summarise information on the search page and providing more insight than we’ve seen before. They are also reimagining how people are using Search and Maps together to provide a more natural and intuitive experience to find what you are looking for.

What benefits can Bard bring to Search Marketing

The application of AI in information analysis and knowledge creation is a thrilling development, making it easier for people to access the information they need and make informed decisions. While many associate Google with providing fast and factual answers, there's a growing demand for deeper insights and understanding.

For example, when researching the difficulty of playing musical instruments such as the piano and guitar, there's often a lot of information to sift through and conflicting opinions to consider. This is where AI comes in. By synthesising data and presenting multiple perspectives, AI can simplify the process and help people make sense of complex information.

Google Search is taking this a step further by incorporating AI-powered features that break down complex information into easily digestible formats. This will give users the ability to quickly understand the big picture, access additional perspectives and dive deeper into related topics. The roll-out of these AI features is imminent and set to revolutionise the way people access information on the web.

An AI Chatbot can also make searching a much more memorable experience which helps to actually educate rather than satisfy quick knowledge consumption. I made this prediction back in January where I talked about ‘The Human Element of Search’

The goal of Bard is to combine the breadth of the world's knowledge with the power, intelligence, and creativity of Google's language models. With Bard, Google is looking to add more AI-powered features to its Search and reimagine how people use Search and Maps together for a more natural and intuitive experience. The application of AI in information analysis and knowledge creation is a crucial development for users to access the information they need and make informed decisions.