Bard's 'wrong answer' fiasco sends Google stocks diving by nearly 9%
The gaffe in a promotional ad for the AI-chatbot cost Google more than $100 billion in market value
Alphabet’s stocks tumbled on Wednesday after its new chatbot gave "wrong answers" in a promotional video. Google stock fell nearly 9% after the ad faux pas, media reports say. The gaffe cost the tech giant more than $100 billion in market value.
Google posted a short GIF video of Bard in action via Twitter, describing the chatbot as a "launchpad for curiosity" that would help simplify complex topics. However, it delivered a factual error that was spotted just hours before the live launch event for Bard in Paris.
Bard is an experimental conversational AI service, powered by LaMDA. Built using our large language models and drawing on information from the web, it’s a launchpad for curiosity and can help simplify complex topics → https://t.co/fSp531xKy3 pic.twitter.com/JecHXVmt8l
— Google (@Google) February 6, 2023
Google launched Bard on Monday after OpenAI, backed by rival Microsoft, rolled out ChatGPT which became popular and quickly posing threat to Google's search. However, it seems that the company has to work more on its LaMDa model.
In the advertisement, Bard is prompted with the question, "What new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope can I tell my 9-year-old about?"
Bard quickly gave out two correct answers. But its final response was inaccurate. Bard wrote that the telescope took the very first pictures of a planet outside our solar system. In fact, the first pictures of these "exoplanets" were taken by the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, according to NASA records.
