This is Google’s new chatbot, announced in response to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Bard was introduced in February 2023. Where does his name come from?
Microsoft has ChatGPT, thanks to OpenAI’s work in artificial intelligence. And, Google? On February 6, 2023, the search giant unveiled Bard, its in-house chatbot, which intends to do the same thing as its competitor’s conversational agent. It was formalized the same week as the conference held by Microsoft and OpenAI on the future of web search.
We know that ChatGPT takes its name from a portmanteau between “tchat” in English (to mean discussion) and GPT, which is an acronym that describes the technique used by OpenAI to operate its chatbot. GPT is translated by “Generative Pre-trained Transformer”, because in English, it gives: “Generative Pre-trained Transformer”.
What is Bard, Google’s chatbot?
And, Bard, then? Does Google’s new AI tool have any special meaning? Yes, but much simpler. As noted by New York Times, Bard was chosen to make a reference to… bards, quite simply. You know it’s these storytellers and poets in Gaelic culture — if you are told Assurancetourix, you should view it.
The American newspaper indicates that Bard was selected because his chatbot is “ a storyteller “. A symbolic choice, but perhaps not quite in line with what Bard is supposed to do: he should not tell stories so much, but rather discuss with the Internet user and provide him with reliable information – not fables.
Bard is based on a language model called LaMDA, an acronym for Language Model for Dialogue Applications. This system was presented for the first time in 2021 and a new, more successful version has since been designed. LaMDA itself is based on an artificial neural network, Transformer, which dates from 2017, and on complementary work in AI dating from 2020.
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