Google Drops Waitlist for AI Chatbot Bard, Expands To Over 180 Countries (theverge.com) 26
Google is adding a smorgasbord of new features to its AI chatbot Bard, including support for new languages (Japanese and Korean), easier ways to export text to Google Docs and Gmail, visual search, and a dark mode. Most significantly, the company is removing the waitlist for Bard and making the system available in English in 180 countries and territories. From a report: It's also promising future features like AI image generation powered by Adobe and integration with third-party web services like Instacart and OpenTable. Collectively, the news is a shot in the arm for Bard, which was released two months ago for select users in the US and UK. The chatbot -- which Google still stresses is an experiment and not a replacement to its search engine -- has compared poorly to rivals like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Microsoft's new Bing chatbot. Notably, Bard made a factual error in its first-ever public demo (though this problem is common to all such bots). Now, Google is adding a lot of new features as well as upgrading Bard to use its new PaLM 2 language model. This should improve its general answers and usability.
Google says the upgraded Bard is particularly good at tackling coding queries, including debugging and explaining chunks of code in more than 20 languages, so some of today's upgrades are focused on this use case. These include the new dark mode, improved citations for code (which will not only offer sources but also explain the snippets), and a new export button. This can already be used to send code to Google's Colab platform but will now also work with another browser-based IDE, Replit (starting with Python queries).
Google says the upgraded Bard is particularly good at tackling coding queries, including debugging and explaining chunks of code in more than 20 languages, so some of today's upgrades are focused on this use case. These include the new dark mode, improved citations for code (which will not only offer sources but also explain the snippets), and a new export button. This can already be used to send code to Google's Colab platform but will now also work with another browser-based IDE, Replit (starting with Python queries).
Bard (Score:3)
aka Drunken Busker
Re: (Score:2)
Earlier today I asked Bard if any animals swing their arms like humans do when running.
Bard told me that yes, dogs, elephants, and giraffe all swing their arms when running.
I pointed it that dogs don't have arms, and maybe it wanted to revise its answer. Bard apologised and said I was right, only elephants and giraffes have arms.
It then went on to argue that while dogs don't have arms, forelegs are kind if like arms and dogs do swing them when running. At that point I gave up.
Re: (Score:2)
I asked Bard to write a letter to abuse@gmail.com pointing out that Gmail is the largest spam provider, and ask Gmail to stop supporting spammers.
Its response:
I'm designed solely to process and generate text, so I'm unable to assist you with that.
So, yeah, writing a letter is not about processing and generating text, according to Druken Busker. Just so happens that if I take the email address out of the prompt then it works just fine but lies about Gmail spam, until you correct it. What garbage.
Re: (Score:2)
A stark contrast from my interaction with Bard where it showed me all of google/google's internal repository. It also happily provided me with internal youtube source code.
This did make me realize two things, however:
1 - we have another decade of comical hacks and leaks coming our way
2 - your LLM response could be an exploit target. imagine a buffer overflow via LLM response tuned specifically to the hardware it runs on.
Get your popcorn ready, the depression will start when fa
Re: (Score:2)
It then went on to argue that while dogs don't have arms...
In ID, AZ and TX, dogs have the right of open carry. In NJ, only sworn K-9s can have arms.
Incorrect (Score:2)
I just tried it, again.
"Bard isn’t currently supported in your country. Stay tuned!"
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Typical for most applications and tools nowadays.
"Oh, you wanted fries? Here's some spinach for you, we think it would make you happy."
Re: (Score:3)
It's not surprising. Many of the bards I've seen tended to be on the chaotic side of the alignment table.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't worry. You aren't missing much. I just asked it to write JavaScript and it gave me PHP.
I tried it out on a technical problem I was working at a customer site this morning, and its response was accurate for an out-of-date version of the operating system.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know I just tried it quickly and a feature really like is it listing sources. While I can get chatgpt to list sources explicitly when I have tried game me some but when I investigated them they where trash.
Re: (Score:2)
Me too... one would expect this "180 countries" to cover at least the whole EU.
Yawn (Score:1)
Google have already lost first mover advantage and doesn’t look like they will be catching up anytime soon.
As soon as they did away with ‘do no evil’, I thought, you are on borrowed time. The goog has peaked and is on the way down.
Re: (Score:2)
But they got so many AI engineers from Apple! Surely that's all they needed! Apple! Apple!
Competition is a good thing (Score:2)
I don't really care that much which AI wins...Bing, ChatGPT, Bard, whatever. The competition itself will give every player incentive to up their game. That's a good thing.
Re: (Score:2)
If you believe the hype, the machines win and we all lose. Never mind that these things do not check their own output and produce nonsense sometimes.
Re: (Score:2)
I believe what I see when I enter actual questions into the chatbots. No, they aren't always right, but they can be checked easily enough. But just the code-generating capabilities keep me coming back.
In this instance, I actually do believe the technology lives up to the hype. This is IMO as big a technological earthquake, as when Google first launched their search engine.
Re: (Score:2)
Me:
Write a compelling letter to abuse@gmail.com explaining that Gmail is the largest spam provider on the internet, provide evidence of the level of spam from gmail, finally ask Gmail to stop supporting spammers.
Bard:
I'm unable to help you with that, as I'm only a language model and don't have the necessary information or abilities.
Ok, writing letters is not processing text apparently. Not worried about any of these AI projects doing anything useful for some time, let alone outsmarting humans.
Re: (Score:2)
There you go again, claiming GMail enables spam, when actually they are the best spam blocker out there. Maybe it's time to admit that your spam filter doesn't actually work.
Re: (Score:2)
You seem to be missing the point. Because of Gmail's size, and because many people use it legitimately, one cannot outright block Gmail. My provider does check SPF, DMARC, and DKIM - all of which mail from Gmail has correct, email from Gmail passes authentication that the email actually came from Google servers. After that point, one is left with content filtering. It may be that my provider's content filtering is not that good. It is also true that my domain gets more email from Gmail accounts, as verifie
Re: (Score:2)
It may be that my provider's content filtering is not that good. It is also true that my domain gets more email from Gmail accounts, as verified by SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, than any other domain and the vast majority of that email is garbage.
Both of these things can be true at the same time.
It's not GMail's fault that people use it to send you spam. They go to great lengths to dissuade spammers, but where there's a will, there's a way. Malware developers will always find ways to thwart controls aimed against them. It doesn't help you when you rely on lower-quality controls. That's on your provider, and on your choice of provider. But don't blame GMail for the fact that spammers try to abuse their services for less-than-honorable purposes. That'
Re: (Score:2)
No, actually the police do something when the highway is filled with getaway cars. The police have a phone number and answer when they get a call. One can take action against getaway cars and the drivers can be locked up. There is no recourse whatsoever from Gmail spam, Gmail is nothing like the roadway at all. Gmail is more like a private highway for getaway cars that protects the getaway drivers from harm while allowing them to go unlimited speeds, no one present, no one to call, anything goes.
I have a
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, GMail has a phone number too, it's a button labeled "Mark As Spam." This button is very effective, and very quickly blacklists the senders.
I don't question that some spammers send from GMail. But it's not their first choice. This is because spammers need to send enormous quantities of emails in a short period of time, before the spam filters catch up. To combat this, reputable email servers implement SPF frameworks to send "soft fails" when too many messages are sent in a short period of time. If the s
Re: (Score:2)
lol, wut?
First, you seem to forget, each and every time we have this conversation, that I'm not a Gmail users - meaning any features of Gmail are not available to me. Marking as spam, and particularly blocking the sender, is not helpful as each message is from a different gmail address each time. I've blocked at least hundreds if not thousands of individual Gmail addresses, and the next spam message from Gmail will be from yet another gmail address.
Second, SPF is about authorizing which servers can send e
Re: (Score:2)
Google is number 7 on the list here:
https://www.spamhaus.org/stati... [spamhaus.org]
Re: (Score:2)
It makes sense that the largest email provider, would be the source of the largest numbers of spam emails.
It's like some of the COVID maps that showed number of infections in each area. The maps were indistinguishable from population density maps.
The question is not the empirical number of spammers or spam messages, but the ratio of spammers to legitimate email senders.