What you need to know about Google's AI, Bard.

If my years working in content marketing have taught me anything, it’s that SEO changes when Google improves its algorithm. And the new trend towards artificial intelligence was not going to be less… until I’ve seen that the change goes much further, affecting even the code as we know it so far.

Google has been, for many years, the main driver of technologies around the world. A leader in search engines, top positions in mail servers, cloud services… a company that knew what it wanted. Until chatGPT arrived and, in the field of artificial intelligence, they surpassed them. Did they give up? No, they started working and improving Bard, Google’s AI system that, according to many, will exceed the expectations of everything we have seen so far. But…

What is Bard really and how does it affect us in the tech sector?

Google’s history with artificial intelligence
Bard, Google’s artificial intelligence
Bard for developers

Google’s history with artificial intelligence

We have to look back 10 years to understand this company’s interest in artificial intelligence. In early 2014 Google buys DeepMind Technologies, a London-based artificial intelligence specialist company specializing in machine learning, advanced algorithms and systems neuroscience.

Up to that point DeepMind was specialized in ecommerce, games and web gamification, but Google wanted to diversify into machines that understood people and could process large amounts of data (Big Data was in its infancy but was already emerging as something transgressive in the way we understand data).

A year later artificial intelligence entered Google’s algorithm. RankBrain is the first aspect of the algorithm to feature self-learning. More effective searches to user queries, a model capable of understanding the long tail of the keywords being searched… and the end of keyword stuffing and fraudulent practices such as link farms.

In successive years, machine learning and AI improvements continue to improve the search engine. And, in 2021, LaMDA appears, an experimental language model that Google tested in applications with dialog (a chatbot). First open to a test environment, then more restrictive in the face of the split that occurs in Google … and now in the form of Bard.

The term LaMDA stands for Language Model for Dialogue Applications.

Bard, Google’s artificial intelligence

2022 was the year of OpenAI’s chatGPT 3.5, the free version accessible to everyone. We have all tried it: with the right prompt, it can even organize a month of a hypocaloric diet or, in versions connected to an API, reprogram an entire website to another language.

The danger of Google’s leadership in different aspects such as search, reliability, etc. has led it to launch Bard on February 7, 2023. A conversational AI that you can prove here.

Bard Features

Launched for the moment as a reduced model, a beta version limited to conversation.
With real-time access to the Internet. This way, the information proposed will be updated.
With natural language. It will look like a human assistant offering help and answers to your queries (not very different from what chatGPT proposes).
Multianswer: it offers you the main answer and two more related drafts.
Direct export to other Google tools such as Docs or Gmail.

In the future Google promises to help unleash the creativity of artists, content experts, developers… we already know that it will have a text-to-image creation platform. And the most important: Google wants to integrate it into its results page. Your SERP will never be the same again… nor will SEO.

In addition, its live connection to the Internet will allow it to identify trends and patterns, so the prompts to be followed will be simpler. It gains in intuition, although it promises more accurate responses to the detriment of the natural language that has always been pursued by its competitor, chatGPT.

Bard for developers

According to Paige Bailey, Group product Manager at Google Research:

Google Research’s Bard has been updated to help people with programming and software development tasks like code generation, code debugging, and code explanation. It can assist with writing functions for Google Sheets and optimize code to make it faster and more efficient. Always double-check responses and test code before relying on it.

In short, Bard can help developers with programming tasks such as code generation, debugging, and code explanation. It does it in more than 20 languages (C++, Go, Java…) although the one that allows you to easily export your code is Python, since Bard is mostly programmed in this language. It hides no secrets for him.

Another comment from Paige Bailey is that “even Bard can correct Bard’s own code. If you get an error message, just point it out, Bard will check it with other parameters…. and that’s it! “

It remains for us to test this tool and its scope to know its reach and limitations. And if you are an expert in Python who knows…. Bard may have a niche for you.