Google’s parent firm, Alphabet, saw its market worth decline by $100 billion on Wednesday as a result of Bard, a new AI chatbot, sharing false information in a promotional video.
During regular trading, Alphabet shares fell as much as 9%, with volumes nearly tripling the 50-day moving average. After hours, they reduced their losses and were nearly flat. With Wednesday’s losses excluded, the stock has gained 15% since the start of this year after losing 40% of its value last year.
The change came about after the $1.3 trillion corporation stated that Bard would soon start conducting public testing.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in a blog post on Tuesday that the company had been working on Bard, a new AI chatbot built on LaMDA, its Language Model for Dialogue Application.
He had stated in the blog post that “We’re taking another step further by offering it up to trustworthy testers before making it more generally available to the public in the coming weeks.”
Although Bard has not yet been made available to the general public, Google on Wednesday found a mistake in it right before the presentation.
Google promised on Twitter that a brief GIF video of Bard in action would help to explain complex subjects, but it instead provided an incorrect response.
What recent findings from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) can I share with my 9-year-old? was the advertisement’s prompt for Bard.
The JWST may have been used to capture the first images of a planet outside of the solar system, or exoplanets, according to one of Bard’s responses.
However, as NASA has confirmed, the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory took the first images of exoplanets in 2004. This is Google’s worst fear.
A Google spokeswoman said, “This emphasizes the need of a thorough testing procedure, something we’re launching off this week with our Trusted Tester program.”
“To ensure that Bard’s responses reach a high standard for quality, safety, and groundedness in real-world knowledge, we’ll combine external feedback with our own internal testing.”