In a blog post, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced the limited release of Bard, a chatbot that will mine the internet for “fresh, high-quality responses” to complex search questions. (The Logic)

Talking point: Bard’s limited release is the first step in Google’s plans to blend a ChatGPT-like technology into its search engine. ChatGPT, built by San Francisco-based OpenAI, set off an AI arms race after becoming wildly popular upon its launch last year, as users marvelled at its ability to (usually) synthesize complex questions into digestible text-based answers. Microsoft is investing US$10 billion in OpenAI, and the text-based technology has apparently prompted an existential crisis at Google, which has been racing to roll out its own competing platform. In his blog post, Pichai sought to underscore the clean usability of Bard, saying it could help “explain new discoveries from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to a nine-year-old,” for example.