The company said on Monday that its new conversational AI service, called Bard, would be opening up to trusted testers, and that it is readying the service for the public 含羞草研究社渋n the coming weeks.含羞草研究社� The technology aims to generate detailed answers when given simple prompts, such as what to make for lunch or how to plan a friend含羞草研究社檚 baby shower.

含羞草研究社淲e含羞草研究社檒l combine external feedback with our own internal testing to make sure Bard含羞草研究社檚 responses meet a high bar for quality, safety, and groundedness in real-world information,含羞草研究社� Alphabet Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai said in a blog post announcing the news. 含羞草研究社淲e含羞草研究社檙e excited for this phase of testing to help us continue to learn and improve Bard含羞草研究社檚 quality and speed.含羞草研究社�

Google含羞草研究社檚 release of Bard comes as the company is facing challenges to its flagship search business, which drives most of its revenue. Last week, Alphabet reported sales that missed expectations amid a digital ad slowdown and investor anxiety that wildly popular AI rivals, like Open AI含羞草研究社檚 ChatGPT, could upend search. Last year, the company declared a 含羞草研究社渃ode red含羞草研究社� in response to ChatGPT含羞草研究社檚 release 含羞草研究社� a move akin to pulling a fire alarm internally, which sent the company含羞草研究社檚 AI engineers scrambling for a response.

Bard will be powered by LaMDA, a large language model developed by Google that stirred controversy in May when a Google software engineer publicly asserted that the AI was 含羞草研究社渟entient含羞草研究社� 含羞草研究社� a claim that has since come under scrutiny. The testers Google selected for early access are a geographically diverse group of people outside of the company who will help it improve and understand how regular users will encounter the AI service in real life, a Google spokesperson said.

Pichai has sought to emphasize the company含羞草研究社檚 progress in artificial intelligence amid heightened competitive pressure from other big tech peers. Microsoft Corp., which announced it is investing $10 billion into OpenAI, announced it is holding an event on Tuesday at its company headquarters after Google made its announcement Monday. The software maker has been working on integrating ChatGPT into its Bing search engine to challenge Google含羞草研究社檚 search dominance, a person familiar with the matter said last month.

In addition to the release of Bard, Google will allow developers to tap into its language models to create their own applications. The company will begin opening up its Generative Language API to companies, developers and creators next month, Pichai said.

含羞草研究社淏eyond our own products, we think it含羞草研究社檚 important to make it easy, safe, and scalable for others to benefit from these advances by building on top of our best models,含羞草研究社� Pichai wrote in the blog post.

Pichai touted the release of the company含羞草研究社檚 large language models in an earnings call last week. He added that users will soon be able to use language models 含羞草研究社渁s a companion to search.含羞草研究社�

Last week, Google announced a partnership with the artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, which is testing its own chatbot to rival ChatGPT. Google has also invested close to $400 million in the startup, according to a person familiar with the matter. The deal gives Google a stake in Anthropic, but doesn含羞草研究社檛 require the startup to spend the funds buying cloud services from Google, Bloomberg earlier reported.

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