Bard Ai vs ChatGPT – Early Impressions

Amidst the growing trend big tech companies launching their own generative AI solutions, the latest being IBM, Google did the unthinkable. Not only did they launch the AI chatbot Bard in 180 countries, they also added several new features such as new language, ease of exporting text to Google Docs and Gmail, visual search and a dark mode. 

And if this did not send some shivers amongst competitors, Google has also promised features like AI image generation powered by Adobe as well as integration with third-party web services such as OpenTable and Instacard. And Google stuck to its DNA of waiting for someone to innovate and then seamlessly and sometimes shamelessly follow suit with their own solutions. Anyone remember the Gmail versus Hotmail story from the early 2000s? 

Google has pulled a fast one here

Before getting down to sharing some of our thoughts around the inevitable comparison that most would make between OpenAI’s ChatGPT (now aligned with Microsoft) and Bard AI, let’s get some facts up right away so that there remains some semblance of objectivity in this report, which otherwise would slip into a very subjective comparison.

For starters, Google did surprise us with its decision to go global with Bard, which it had released about two months ago, and then only to select users in the US and UK. It had also told us then that it was an experiment and not a replacement of its search engine. What’s more, it had its egg-on-face moment at the first demo. 

What differentiates Bard from ChatGPT

Now that we’ve got the difficult bit out of the way, here’s what a quick comparison with ChatGPT suggests: 

• It is already a search engine, which ChatGPT isn’t (which is where Bing AI comes in). We tried a few searches on Bard and it got us real-time results which means it was finding the most relevant and up-to-date information from the web, thanks to Google’s years of indexing content around the virtual world. 
• It was a pleasant experience to actually talk to Bard and then get results typed out. Most of the queries we raised got us the right result though there were some in local languages that required more than one or two prompts. But, that’s the nature of the beast – the same as when we speak Siri or Android Assistant. 
• One feature that we found interesting is its ability to summarize web results, thereby giving a gist of what could be a long piece of text. We tried copy pasting the URL of a page that had details of a legal battle and Bard actually provided a decent and cogent summary of the same. What’s more, we could give Bard a word count to summarize. 
• Bard also has a way of throwing up multiple drafts of its responses, which means that one could provide feedback on the fly or choose the one that is the closest match to the query and additional prompts. Of course, the easier option is to continuously prompt Bard to tweak its responses to suit our requirements. 
• Most coders out there may find Bard’s ability to explain code rather intriguing. However, this is a feature that could come in handy when someone is learning a new programming language or seeking to debug existing code. The chatbot generates a detailed explanation of the code and also responds to additional queries around it.
• Google’s hegemony over search means that Bard is capable of even suggesting the right query to get additional information around the topic that one is seeking. By typing “suggest” after the query or a prompt, Bard generates a few Google searches related to the topic and clicking on them leads the user further down that path.  

While we are still playing round with the system and may come up with more use cases, it would be great if readers can share their feedback right below in the comments section. Of course, one very important factor that differentiates ChatGPT with Google Bard is that this bard sings for FREE – at least for the moment!