Google parent Alphabet loses $100 billion in market value after AI chatbot Bard gives wrong answer

The error was caught hours before Bard’s launch event in Paris. In the video showing Bard in action, the chatbot delivers an erroneous answer to a prompt.

Google Inc’s new experimental AI service, ‘Bard’, which was developed as an answer to Microsoft’s ChatGPT, delivered inaccurate information in its promotional video. Shares of the company tumbled 7.8 percent on the Nasdaq exchange in the regular trading hours on February 8, and were largely flat in the after-hour trading.

The error was caught by Reuters few hours before Bard’s launch event in Paris. In the video showing Bard in action, the chatbot responds to a question about what to tell a 9-year old about new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), saying that the JWST was used to take pictures of a planet outside the Milky Way. This is not true.

Also Read: Google unveils ChatGPT rival Bard, AI search plans in battle with Microsoft

The chatbot, which aims to simplify complex topics, was built to compete with Microsoft’s ground-breaking AI chatbot, ChatGPT. However, Google seems to have come up with a rival too quickly.

Generally speaking, there still is a long way to go for AI systems to be incorporated into business operations and replace jobs. The risks of plagiarism, skewed results and inaccurate solutions remain.