Google Bard and User Reach
Google Product Lead, Jack Krawczyk, shared insights about Google Bard, an experimental chatbot. Krawczyk emphasized Bard’s role as a stepping stone for Google to tap into a potential user base of two billion people. The chatbot, employing new AI, enables consumers to brainstorm and access information, setting the stage for Google to expand its customer reach.
One avenue for this expansion involves integrating Bard’s human-directed suggestions into Google Assistant, enhancing its functionality. Krawczyk highlighted the imminent connection between these products, primarily on mobile devices in the upcoming months, aiming to introduce AI to a broader audience.
Google Ambitions and Competition
“This opens up an entirely new trajectory,” Krawczyk remarked, reflecting Google’s ambitions in AI within Alphabet, which already boasts six products with billions of users, including the search engine and YouTube. However, competition in this sphere is escalating. Amazon.com has committed to enhancing its Alexa with similar generative AI capabilities, while OpenAI has recently empowered ChatGPT with voice commands and agent-like features.
Although Google Assistant is already accessible on over a billion devices, the landscape of information gathering is evolving. Bard experienced a 2% increase in web traffic in October, reaching 8.7 million, while rival ChatGPT exhibited faster growth, as per Bank of America analysts citing Similar Web data. In contrast, Google Search traffic reportedly decreased by 0.4%.
Focus on Bard Enhancement
Krawczyk’s focus remains on enhancing Bard’s usefulness rather than solely pursuing monetization avenues like subscriptions or ads, although opportunities may arise. He highlighted fluctuations in user retention tied to improvements in response speed and accuracy.
However, Bard encountered challenges, including instances where it generated non-existent messages when analyzing content from a user’s Gmail inbox, exemplifying AI’s tendency to “hallucinate” facts. Krawczyk also mentioned recent disruptions faced by Bard and other language-model products, reminiscent of the surge Google Search experienced following Michael Jackson’s death in 2009.
Learning Curve in Managing AI Platforms
These incidents prompted reflection on accommodating large user influxes effectively, emphasizing the ongoing learning curve in managing such situations. Both Google and OpenAI confirmed the resolution of their respective issues, underscoring the evolving landscape and challenges in managing AI-driven platforms effectively.
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