LONDON: Alphabet Inc lost $100 billion in market value on Wednesday after its new chatbot shared false information in a promotional video and a company event failed to dazzle, feeding concerns that Google mother- The father is losing ground to rival Microsoft Corp.
Shares of Alphabet, which fell as much as 9% during regular trading, were flat after hours. Shares of Microsoft rose nearly 3% before paring gains. They were also flat in after-market trade.
Reuters first pointed out an error in Google’s ad for the chatbot forageThat began Monday as the satellite first took pictures of a planet outside Earth’s solar system.
Google has been on its heels after this OpenAIA startup Microsoft is backing with nearly $10 billion introduced software in November that has impressed consumers and become a fixture in Silicon Valley circles for its surprisingly precise and well-written answers to simple prompts.
Google’s live-streamed presentation Wednesday morning did not include details about how and when Bard will be integrated into its core search function. The day before, Microsoft held an event stating that it had already released to the public a version of its Bing search with ChatGPT functions.
Bard’s error was discovered just before the presentation by Google, based in Mountain View, California.
“While Google has been a leader in AI innovation over the past several years, it seems they’ve slept on implementing this technology into their search product,” said Gil Luria, senior software analyst at DA Davidson. “Google has been scrambling over the past few weeks to catch up on search and this has led to yesterday’s (Tuesday) announcement and an embarrassing mess of posting wrong answers during their demo.”
Alphabet posted a short GIF video of Bard via Twitter, promising it would help simplify complex topics, but it turned up a wrong answer.
In the ad, Bard is prompted: “What new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) discoveries can I tell my 9-year-old about?” Bard responds with several answers, including one suggesting that the JWST was used to take the first pictures of a planet outside Earth’s solar system, or exoplanet. However, the first pictures of exoplanets were taken by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in 2004, which was confirmed by NASA.
“This highlights the importance of a rigorous testing process, something we’re starting this week with our Trusted Testers program,” said a Google spokesperson. “We will combine external feedback with our own internal testing to ensure that Bard’s responses meet a high bar for quality, security and groundedness in real-world information.”
formidable competitor
Alphabet is coming off a disappointing fourth quarter as advertisers cut spending.
The search and advertising giant is moving quickly to keep pace with OpenAI and rivals, reportedly bringing on founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page to accelerate its efforts.
“People are starting to question whether Microsoft is now going to be a formidable competitor against Google’s really bread-and-butter business,” said King Lipp, chief strategist at Baker Avenue Wealth Management.
Lip cautioned, however, that concerns about Alphabet may be overstated, saying: “I think Bing is still a long way from Google’s search capabilities.”
The new ChatGPT software has sparked excitement among technology firms after thousands of job cuts in recent weeks and executives pledging to work on so-called moonshot projects. AI has become a fixation for tech executives, who mentioned it six times more often on recent earnings calls than in previous quarters, Reuters found.
The appeal of AI-powered search is that it can produce results in plain language rather than a list of links, which can make browsing faster and more efficient. It’s unclear what impact this might have on targeted advertising, the backbone of search engines like Google.
Chatbot AI systems also pose a risk to corporations due to inherent biases in their algorithms that can skew results, sexualize images or even steal them, as consumers who have tested the service have discovered. For example, Microsoft released a chatbot on Twitter in 2016 that quickly began generating racist content before being shut down. And the AI used by the news site CNET was found to produce factually incorrect or plagiarized stories.
At the time of writing, Bard’s ad had been viewed over a million times on Twitter.
Shares of Alphabet, which fell as much as 9% during regular trading, were flat after hours. Shares of Microsoft rose nearly 3% before paring gains. They were also flat in after-market trade.
Reuters first pointed out an error in Google’s ad for the chatbot forageThat began Monday as the satellite first took pictures of a planet outside Earth’s solar system.
Google has been on its heels after this OpenAIA startup Microsoft is backing with nearly $10 billion introduced software in November that has impressed consumers and become a fixture in Silicon Valley circles for its surprisingly precise and well-written answers to simple prompts.
Google’s live-streamed presentation Wednesday morning did not include details about how and when Bard will be integrated into its core search function. The day before, Microsoft held an event stating that it had already released to the public a version of its Bing search with ChatGPT functions.
Bard’s error was discovered just before the presentation by Google, based in Mountain View, California.
“While Google has been a leader in AI innovation over the past several years, it seems they’ve slept on implementing this technology into their search product,” said Gil Luria, senior software analyst at DA Davidson. “Google has been scrambling over the past few weeks to catch up on search and this has led to yesterday’s (Tuesday) announcement and an embarrassing mess of posting wrong answers during their demo.”
Alphabet posted a short GIF video of Bard via Twitter, promising it would help simplify complex topics, but it turned up a wrong answer.
In the ad, Bard is prompted: “What new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) discoveries can I tell my 9-year-old about?” Bard responds with several answers, including one suggesting that the JWST was used to take the first pictures of a planet outside Earth’s solar system, or exoplanet. However, the first pictures of exoplanets were taken by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in 2004, which was confirmed by NASA.
“This highlights the importance of a rigorous testing process, something we’re starting this week with our Trusted Testers program,” said a Google spokesperson. “We will combine external feedback with our own internal testing to ensure that Bard’s responses meet a high bar for quality, security and groundedness in real-world information.”
formidable competitor
Alphabet is coming off a disappointing fourth quarter as advertisers cut spending.
The search and advertising giant is moving quickly to keep pace with OpenAI and rivals, reportedly bringing on founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page to accelerate its efforts.
“People are starting to question whether Microsoft is now going to be a formidable competitor against Google’s really bread-and-butter business,” said King Lipp, chief strategist at Baker Avenue Wealth Management.
Lip cautioned, however, that concerns about Alphabet may be overstated, saying: “I think Bing is still a long way from Google’s search capabilities.”
The new ChatGPT software has sparked excitement among technology firms after thousands of job cuts in recent weeks and executives pledging to work on so-called moonshot projects. AI has become a fixation for tech executives, who mentioned it six times more often on recent earnings calls than in previous quarters, Reuters found.
The appeal of AI-powered search is that it can produce results in plain language rather than a list of links, which can make browsing faster and more efficient. It’s unclear what impact this might have on targeted advertising, the backbone of search engines like Google.
Chatbot AI systems also pose a risk to corporations due to inherent biases in their algorithms that can skew results, sexualize images or even steal them, as consumers who have tested the service have discovered. For example, Microsoft released a chatbot on Twitter in 2016 that quickly began generating racist content before being shut down. And the AI used by the news site CNET was found to produce factually incorrect or plagiarized stories.
At the time of writing, Bard’s ad had been viewed over a million times on Twitter.