Google Bard vs ChatGPT – Google just started Bard, their own AI chatbot that competes with OpenAI’s famous ChatGPT. Bard and ChatGPT both are conversational AI systems powered by LLM (large language models) that can understand users’ questions and generate human-like responses in no seconds. However, there are some major differences between them.
What is Google Bard?
Announced in February 2023, Bard aims to combine the breadth of the world’s knowledge with the power, intelligence, and creativity of Google’s large language models. It is designed to provide fresh, high-quality responses to complex user questions in natural language.
Bard uses information from the web to provide updated, real-world knowledge in its answers to the users. This gives it an advantage over ChatGPT, which is limited to data up to 2021 since that’s when it was trained. Google states that Bard is designed to provide responses that are more factual and based on real-time data, as opposed to ChatGPT which can only speculate based on its training data from 2021 and earlier.
Some potential use cases for Bard include:
- Getting explanations on complex topics
- Having natural conversations to refine and clarify questions
- Brainstorming creative ideas, e.g., for stories or activity suggestions
- Getting inputs to help make decisions, e.g., “what camera to buy”
What is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT, launched by OpenAI in November 2022, quickly became viral in the technology world thanks to its ability to understand people’s questions and provide coherent answers on practically any topic. It uses a technology called generative pre-trained transformers (GPT) to generate human-like text responses based on the patterns in massive datasets.
Critical abilities of ChatGPT include:
- Answering natural language questions accurately
- Admitting when it doesn’t know something vs guessing
- Challenging incorrect premises and biased framing in questions
- Declining harmful, unethical, dangerous, or illegal requests
- Conversations on wide-ranging topics like a human would
Some current amazing uses of ChatGPT are content writing, answering queries, providing customer support, generating ideas/recommendations, and even helping with coding and math problems.
How Do Google Bard and ChatGPT Compare?
While both Bard and ChatGPT showcase impressive AI conversational abilities, there are some prominent differences:
- Accessibility & Availability:ChatGPT is publicly available for free via the chat interface. Bard access is currently limited in 2023, with little known commercial availability.
- Knowledge Breadth:Bard can access up-to-date real-world information indexed by Google’s search engine. ChatGPT’s knowledge cuts off in 2022 since that’s when it was trained.
- Response Quality:Early Bard responses showed mixed results – some impressively good, others incorrect or nonsensical, but with time, Bard’s responses improved. ChatGPT appears more consistent, though it is still far from perfect.
- Creativity:ChatGPT is better at responding imaginatively to story writing. Bard’s imagination remains to be seen, but it can help make decisions.
- Factual Correctness:Bard aims for more grounded, accurate responses based on web searching. However, some initial replies still needed to be more precise. ChatGPT makes up replies it thinks are logical.
- Safety:Both have built-in filters to minimize potentially harmful responses, though these are never foolproof for AI systems.
Which is Better: Bard or ChatGPT?
It’s too early to declare if Bard will overtake ChatGPT in utility and performance. ChatGPT has a multi-year HeadStart in refining its conversational abilities. But Bard has the advantage of Google’s vast computing infrastructure and direct access to internet information.
ChatGPT is more polished right now, with surprisingly human-like conversational skills. But, its knowledge cut-off in 2022 and lack of real-world grounding are limitations. (Subject to potential updates in the future.)
Though early demos were mixed, Bard aims to provide up-to-date, factual responses. If Google can mix its great searching skills with the detailed understanding of how words work, Bard could become really important. In the short term, ChatGPT is currently appears ahead. But with Big Tech racing to lead AI innovation, expect rapid iterations from both platforms. Over time, integration may provide the best experience – Bard’s knowledge and facts complementing ChatGPT’s eloquence and imagination.
The next few years promise dramatic progress in conversational AI. Both platforms have strengths and will compete to provide the most utility. ChatGPT has an edge, but Bard’s knowledge focus gives it disruptive potential if Google can refine its quality and consistency.
