Google Loses $100 Billion as New Bard Chatbot Flunks First Public Test
Alphabet sees its market value plummet by $100 billion after its new AI chatbot, Bard, shares false information about space discoveries in a promotional tweet.
Google's parent company, Alphabet, loses $100 billion in market value after its new artificial intelligence chatbot, Bard, provides a factual error during its first public demonstration. The conversational bot, designed to rival Microsoft's popular ChatGPT, faces immediate backlash for sharing incorrect information in a promotional video posted on Twitter.
In the controversial ad, Bard incorrectly claims that the James Webb Space Telescope takes the very first pictures of exoplanets outside of Earth's solar system. Social media users quickly point out that the European Southern Observatory actually captures those first images back in 2004, joking that Google could have verified this fact by simply using its own search engine.
This embarrassing mistake occurs just hours before Google executives tout Bard as the future of the company at a major launch event in Paris. As a result of the blunder, Alphabet shares plunge by 9% during Wednesday trading hours, highlighting the high stakes and intense pressure of the current artificial intelligence arms race with Microsoft.