Google CEO calls Bard 'a souped-up Civic' compared to ChatGPT and Bing Chat

Google has solidified its position at the top of the search engine hierarchy as the most widely used search engine in the world. Naturally, expectations were high for Google's AI chatbot. Unfortunately, the results fell short.

Google Bard was released four months after OpenAI made their powerful and highly capable ChatGPT available to the public. In that time, Bing Chat also entered the scene and held its own against ChatGPT.

Also:ChatGPT vs. Bing Chat: Which AI chatbot should you use?

Therefore, when Google Bard was unveiled, it faced the challenge of surpassing or matching the capabilities of both ChatGPT and Bing Chat -- a challenge it didn't meet.

While Google Bard was able to handle some tasks, it couldn't compare to its two competitors -- and Google's CEO Sundar Pichai recognizes this.

Also: How to use ChatGPT to summarize a book, article, or research paper

"I feel like we took a souped-up Civic and put it in a race with more powerful cars," said Pichai in an interview with The New York Times, using a humorous analogy.

Though amusing, this analogy accurately reflects feedback from users about their experiences with the chatbot.

However, there may be a change on the horizon. In addition to acknowledging its shortcomings, Pichai reveals that Bard will undergo a major transformation.

"We have more capable models," Pichai explains. "Soon, as this [NYT article] goes live, we will be upgrading Bard to our more advanced PaLM models. These models will bring enhanced capabilities in reasoning, coding, and improved math-solving abilities."

The initial version of Bard used a lightweight model version of LaMDA, Google's Language Model for Dialogue Applications. This set it apart from the LLMs used by Bing Chat and ChatGPT, which are part of the powerful GPT series created by OpenAI.

Bing, a significant underdog in the search engine game, is celebrating Bing Chat's success and Google's lack thereof.

Also:ChatGPT just debugged my code. For real.

In response to Pichai's interview with The New York Times, Michael Schechter, Vice President of Growth and Distribution at Microsoft, tweeted "Oceans rise, empires fall."

However, the celebration may be premature, as Google still has a chance to redeem itself with the transition to PaLM models, which Pichai claims are more capable.