At an all-hands assembly Thursday, Google staff had the prospect to pepper CEO Sundar Pichai and Bard product lead Jack Krawczyk with questions, according to CNBC, which mentioned it obtained audio of the assembly.

One employee requested the next query by way of Google’s inner discussion board Dory, based on CNBC:

“Bard and ChatGPT are massive language fashions, not information fashions. They’re nice at producing human-sounding textual content, they aren’t good at guaranteeing their textual content is fact-based. Why do we expect the massive first utility ought to be Search, which at its coronary heart is about discovering true info?”

Krawczyk, making his all-hands debut, shortly responded, “I simply need to be very clear: Bard isn’t search.”

As an alternative, he mentioned, it’s “a collaborative A.I. service.”

“The magic that we’re discovering in utilizing the product is basically round being this artistic companion to serving to you be the spark plug for creativeness, discover your curiosity, and many others.,” he mentioned. However, he added, “We are able to’t cease customers from attempting to make use of it like search.”

In fact, search may be very a lot on the minds of Google buyers and staff. When OpenAI shared its A.I. chatbot ChatGPT with the general public in late November, ideas instantly turned to how the know-how would possibly disrupt Google’s search dominance. 

Fears about that have been hardly allayed when Microsoft launched a ChatGPT-powered rival to Google search final month. (It’s accessible to a restricted variety of customers for now however might be extra broadly accessible quickly.)

Google responded final month with a video of a demo of Bard, however that was botched by a factual error from the chatbot regarding the James Webb Area Telescope. Wall Road promptly punished Google mum or dad Alphabet, sending its shares down sharply.

One other query on Thursday was in regards to the demo, based on CNBC, with an worker asking, “The primary public demo was demoralizing, despatched our inventory right into a nosedive, and invited large media protection. What actually occurred?”

“Questions like this may be truthful and we need to reiterate the truth that Bard has not launched,” Krawczyk replied. “We acknowledged to the world that that is one thing that we’re experimenting with—we’re testing it. However there’s lots of pleasure within the business proper now.”

One other employee reportedly commented, “Launching AI looks as if a knee-jerk response with out a technique.”

“I disagree with the premise of this query” Pichai responded, noting Google has been “engaged on A.I. for a very long time.” 

Certainly, OpenAI was established in 2015 “as a counterweight to Google” in A.I., Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who helped begin it, tweeted final month. He additionally complained that OpenAI had “develop into a closed supply, maximum-profit firm successfully managed by Microsoft.” (Musk is now reportedly working to establish a rival to OpenAI.)

However Google, although it’s lengthy been robust on the A.I. analysis entrance, has way more to lose than anybody else if customers begin Googling much less and turning to the A.I. chatbots of others extra for his or her search queries. 

Google didn’t instantly reply to Fortune’s request for feedback.

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