Google's AI Gets a Huge Makeover

We're talking about Bard, of course.


According to Google, it's getting the most significant upgrade yet.

Google says Gemini has "sophisticated multimodal reasoning capabilities" and is designed to be flexible. It's optimized for three sizes — Ultra, Pro, and Nano — to run on everything from data centers to mobile devices.

Beginning today, Bard will use Gemini Pro in English for more "advanced reasoning, planning, and understanding." Next year, Google will deliver Bard Advanced, giving users access to its most advanced models and capabilities for the first time.

Google says it ran Gemini Pro through several industry-standard benchmarks before unleashing it on the public and that in six of eight benchmarks, it beat GPT-3.5. The areas where Gemini Pro bested GPT-3.5. Include Massive Multitask Language Understanding (MMLU), one of the leading standards for measuring large AI models.

Gemini Pro in Bard is proficient at "understanding, summarizing, reasoning, coding, and planning." They claim, "Bard is now the most preferred free chatbot compared to leading alternatives."

As if that's not enough, Gemini Ultra will debut early in 2024. Google Ultra is designed for very complex tasks and to quickly understand and act on all kinds of information. It can understand text, images, audio, video, and code.

Consumers can check out Gemini Ultra through Bard Advanced, which will give them what Google calls "a new, cutting-edge AI experience." For now, the company is running a lot of safety checks and plans to run a tester program before letting Bard Advanced run wild.

All of the testing and caution are in line with the responsible approach Google has always taken since the company launched Bard. They are adamant that they've built safety into Bard based on their AI Principles, which include contextual help such as Bard's "Google it" button that helps double-check its answers.

That's something to be happy about, considering there's so much fear that AI is going to soon take over the world.

Does Bard bring Google a step closer to the company's vision of AI dominance or is it another entry in the AI wars that seem to be commonplace these days?

Let's ask ChatGPT.

Want to read this in Spanish? Spanish Version >>