Google described the AI-powered chatbot as an “experimental conversational AI service” that will respond to users’ queries and join in conversations. Shortly after the announcement, the Bard AI chatbot drew flak for not providing a correct fact about a question on the James Webb Space Telescope during the AI product preview event, which dropped Google’s stock by at least 9% this week. “This highlights the importance of a rigorous testing process, something that we’re kicking off this week with our Trusted Tester program,” said a Google spokesperson about the error earlier this week to Insider. “We’ll combine external feedback with our own internal testing to make sure Bard’s responses meet a high bar for quality, safety and groundedness in real-world information.” Google employees took to the company’s internal meme generator, commonly referred to as MemeGen, to call out the Bard AI preview event as “rushed,” “botched,” “un-googley,” and “comically short sighted.” The memes created by Googlers criticized Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai, the hushed up preview of Bard AI, the layoffs, and more, according to a report from CNBC. For instance, one popular meme included a serious picture of Pichai that read, “Dear Sundar, the Bard launch and the layoffs were rushed, botched, and myopic” asking him to “please return to taking a long-term outlook.” Another meme had a photo of a bird doing a facepalm that said, “Rushing Bard to market in a panic validated the market’s fear about us.” While one highly rated meme referred to the lowest category in Google’s employee performance review system that read, “Sundar, and leadership, deserve a Perf NI. They are being comically short sighted and un-Googlely in their pursuit of ‘sharpening focus’.” Other popular memes that surfaced this week included an image of a dumpster fire with the Google “G” logo on it. The text said, “How everything’s felt since last year.” One meme took a dig at Google’s last month decision to lay off about 12,000 employees, or more than 6% of its overall workforce. The meme read, “Firing 12k people rises the stock by 3%, one rushed AI presentation drops it by 8%”, which had a photo of actor Nicholas Cage with a smile on his face. Google’s move to debut Bard AI is due to threats from its insanely popular competitor, OpenAI’s ChatGPT launched in November 2021. Within a few days of its release, ChatGPT managed to garner more than one million users within a week. Be it content writing through simple prompts, organizing people’s meals, planning a holiday party, or even writing a song, and much more, the ChatGPT can do it all. Besides ChatGPT, Google also faces stiff competition from Microsoft, who on Wednesday announced its all-new Bing search engine and Edge web browser, powered by OpenAI and ChatGPT technology. Google has yet to comment on the internal response to Bard.
