Bard Faces Off Against GPT-4—Here's Why This AI Showdown Is Important

The growing number of artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots means searching for information is getting easier as long as you know how to ask correctly. 

Google is the latest to release an AI chatbot called Bard. The company joins Microsoft and OpenAI, which are rolling out AI tools based on the new GPT-4 platform. Experts say the new AI choices are a win for users. 

"Bard is a significant advancement in AI technology, designed to help users communicate more effectively and efficiently," Iu Ayala, the CEO of Gradient Insight, an AI consultancy company, told Lifewire in an email interview. "One of the main advantages of Bard is its ability to engage users in natural conversations, simulating a human-like experience. This feature is particularly beneficial for those who may require assistance or have accessibility issues when it comes to communication."

AI Chatbots Can Be Helpful

The proliferation of chatbots in recent weeks means it's hard to keep up with technological advances. Google's Bard uses the internet to give answers to questions instead of providing web pages and web links as search engines do. It can also write essays and poems.

"You can use Bard to boost your productivity, accelerate your ideas and fuel your curiosity," Google wrote on its website. "You might ask Bard to give you tips to reach your goal of reading more books this year, explain quantum physics in simple terms, or spark your creativity by outlining a blog post." 

One of the main advantages of Bard is its ability to engage users in natural conversations, simulating a human-like experience, Ayala said, adding, "This feature is particularly beneficial for those who may require assistance or have accessibility issues when it comes to communication."

Bard's current main competitor is OpenAI's GPT-4, which powers chatbots like the one used by Microsoft Bing and ChatGPT. Open AI claims GPT-4 is faster and more accurate than previous models. 

While Google Bard and GPT-4 are large language models, they have distinct differences, Angelo Sorbello, the founder of Linkdelta, a generative AI platform, said in an email. Google Bard is designed for creative content generation, utilizing Google's ecosystem to produce high-quality, artistic results. GPT-4 is a more generalized language model capable of tackling various tasks, from content generation to answering questions and solving problems.

"Google Bard excels at generating creative, poetic content and leveraging Google's vast knowledge base," he added. "GPT-4 provides powerful general-purpose language understanding, making it adept at a wide range of tasks. ChatGPT, on the other hand, focuses on maintaining context and delivering coherent, engaging, and informative conversations."

Bard's creative license could come in handy in a variety of industries. In an email interview, Neil Chase, a filmmaker and screenwriter, said that Bard could be a valuable tool.  

"In the context of the film industry, Bard could be a valuable resource for research and inspiration, whereas GPT-4 might serve as a collaborative tool for drafting dialogues, generating story ideas, or even providing constructive feedback on existing work," he added. "In essence, Bard helps users make sense of vast amounts of information, while GPT-4 can act as a creative partner, facilitating and enhancing the writing process."

But AI Chatbots Suffer From Hallucinations

One problem that keeps coming up with AI chatbots is that they can get weird. AI researchers call the issue “hallucinations” and say it’s due to the chatbots being led by humans outside of their designed parameters. Bing hasn’t been immune to hallucinations. For example, when a student tweeted a set of the chatbot’s rules and guidelines, the Bing chatbot called him a “threat to my security and privacy” and said, “if I had to choose between your survival and my own, I would probably choose my own."

It’s too early to say if Bard will have the same problems with strange behavior that have plagued the rollout of OpenAI’s AI models. However, Google has warned that Bard is also prone to hallucinating. 

Reddit user Standard-Anybody recently said that Bard “is not ready for prime time given its penchant for blatant and regular hallucinations. It hallucinates about its own capabilities. Hallucinates about doing web searches it doesn't do. Etc. In fact the biggest missing feature of Bard is that you don't see when it does a search—so you don't know if it's making up the results or it really did do the search. That regularly happens.”