Some Google employees are questioning the decision to pour resources into ChatGPT rival Bard, messages show
- Googlers are questioning the usefulness of Bard, Bloomberg reported.
- Google's Bard chatbot is the company's answer to OpenAI's ChatGPT.
Some Googlers are raising thorny questions about the company's ChatGPT rival, Bard.
First announced in February, Google's Bard chatbot is one of the company's flagship generative AI products. The launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT months earlier reportedly put the company on high alert and led to resources being poured into generative AI projects.
In an invitation-only Discord chat, Google designers, product managers, and engineers have been questioning the bot's usefulness, as well as the amount of resources being poured into the project, Bloomberg reported.
"The biggest challenge I'm still thinking of: what are LLMs truly useful for, in terms of helpfulness?" Cathy Pearl, a user experience lead for Bard, wrote in the chat in August, per Bloomberg. "Like really making a difference. TBD!"
"My rule of thumb is not to trust LLM output unless I can independently verify it," Dominik Rabiej, a senior product manager for Bard, said in July. "Would love to get it to a point that you can, but it isn't there yet."
AI-powered chatbots are prone to hallucinations, often inventing or misrepresenting facts. Google's Bard, for example, falsely said there was a ceasefire between Gaza and Israel despite the recent violent escalation between the two nations.
A representative for Google told Insider: "This is completely routine and unsurprising. Since launching Bard as an experiment, we've been eager to hear people's feedback on what they like and how we can further improve the experience. Our discussion channel with people who use Discord is one of the many ways we do that."
This is also not the first time Googlers have raised doubts about Google's generative AI push.
Leaked audio obtained by Insider showed that some Googlers were concerned about the impact of Google's aggressive push to build generative AI. In May, Googlers bombarded leaders with questions about the company's strategy, asking if it's become too AI-focused, Insider previously reported.