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The Google Bard AI has been the chief topic of discussion in the tech community over the last couple of days, with the company looking to dethrone OpenAI's ChatGPT and surpass Microsoft's AI endeavors.
However, due to a significant marketing oversight, Google suffered a setback when a wrong answer generated by Bard caused a loss of $100 billion in market value. Alphabet Inc's stock dropped by approximately 7.68% to $98.04.
In recent hours, the market has stabilized, with each share currently priced at approximately $99.55. Yesterday, the company's shares closed at $107.64.
A close look at what went wrong with the Google Bard AI
The company organized a live event in Paris with its senior executives to demonstrate the progress that has been made possible by integrating the Google Bard AI into Search. In addition to this progress, the executives also demonstrated the new AI-enhanced features in Lens and Maps.
However, the bot got some essential facts wrong in its first marketing campaign. In response to a prompt that asked Bard to simplify the discoveries of the James Webb telescope for a nine-year-old, the bot came up with the answer depicted in the image below.
The bot got the third point wrong. Although the Webb telescope has taken pictures of exoplanets, it was not the first to do so. The Very Large Telescope, an observatory in Chile, took the first picture of a probable exoplanet, the 2M1207b orbiting a brown dwarf, back in 2004.
The pictures were confirmed to be those of an exoplanet in 2005, according to NASA. In contrast, the James Webb telescope was only launched in 2021.
Other factors leading to the loss of investor faith in Google
The incorrect response generated by Google Bard AI is not the only factor leading to the massive market value plunge. Microsoft held its AI presentation on Tuesday, a day before Google. During this presentation, the Redmond-based company outlined the addition of OpenAI's ChatGPT to Azure and Bing services. Users will soon be able to interact with Bing searches.
In comparison to what Microsoft showcased and outlined, investors found Google's AI presentation to be lackluster since it did not offer any insight into how the company would compete against Microsoft's offerings. This resulted in a massive 8% drop in the share price. While Alphabet's market value topped out at $1.35 trillion on Tuesday, it slid down to $1.27 billion the day after.
It is important to note that other generative text bots are not flawless either, and ChatGPT also occasionally makes errors in its responses. Therefore, the strong reaction to the mistakes made by Google Bard AI is largely due to the promises the company previously made regarding its AI advancements.
