A sell-off of Alphabet Inc. shares reduced the market worth of Google’s parent company by $100 billion. The decline came on Wednesday following a promotional video for Google’s new chatbot, Bard, which provided incorrect information.
It has raised concerns that Microsoft Corp. may gain an advantage over Google. This situation comes quite after Tuesday when Microsoft announced an update to its Edge browser and Bing search engine that incorporates technology from OpenAI, increasing the pressure on Google.
In the world of technology, companies are constantly pushing the boundaries of innovation, trying to outdo each other to create the latest and greatest AI tools. But sometimes, even the biggest names in the game can falter, as was the case this week for Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc.
Alphabet, founded in 2015 as the holding company for Google, saw its shares decline by 7.4% to $99.67 on Wednesday, with shares falling as much as 8.9% earlier in the day. This represents the biggest drop for the company in over three months and is largely due to concerns raised by its latest AI chatbot, Bard.
What is Bard?
Bard, currently in a testing phase and available only to a limited number of trusted testers, has been found to deliver inaccurate or outdated responses, sparking concern among investors. This is particularly concerning in light of the recent launch of OpenAI’s popular chatbot, ChatGPT, which many in the tech industry are calling the future of search.
What is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is an advanced language generation model developed by OpenAI. It is trained on a large corpus of text data and uses this training to generate human-like responses to text-based inputs. This AI model can understand and generate text in a variety of styles, including conversation, narration, and description. The ultimate goal of ChatGPT is to provide users with a sophisticated, human-like interaction experience through the generation of natural language text.
Google has always been at the forefront of the AI revolution, and on Wednesday, the company hosted a news conference in Paris to share more details about its progress in integrating artificial intelligence into search. Investors are, however, vigilant for any threat to Google’s search business, which is still the company’s main source of revenue.
In response to the concerns raised by Bard, Google released a statement saying that the chatbot’s response “highlights the importance of a rigorous testing process.” The company went on to say that it would combine external feedback with its own internal testing to ensure that Bard’s responses meet a high bar for quality, safety, and grounding in real-world information.
Despite this, investors continue to be alert to any threat to Google’s search business, which is still its main source of revenue. However, Alphabet’s losses are staggering, standing at $100 billion despite Google’s assurances. This serves as a cautionary tale for companies in the tech industry, reminding us that even the biggest names can stumble if they don’t take the time to thoroughly test their products before releasing them to the public.
Sources: moneycontrol.com
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