Alphabet’s AI Chatbot Bard Launches In Europe

Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, Bard, has officially launched in Europe and Brazil as the company prepares to take on ChatGPT.

The company announced in a Thursday (July 13) blog post what it called the largest-ever expansion of its AI chatbot, coming as the tech giant faces off against established rival Microsoft and more recent competitors in the AI race: Meta and Elon Musk’s xAI.

“Starting today, you can collaborate with Bard in over 40 languages, including Arabic, Chinese, German, Hindi and Spanish,” Jack Krawczyk, Bard’s product lead, wrote in the post.

“Sometimes hearing something out loud can help you approach your idea in a different way,” he added. “…This is especially helpful if you want to hear the correct pronunciation of a word or listen to a poem or script.”

Read more: When Chatbots Go Rogue

Google has also added features like the ability to adjust the tone and style of responses, according to the post. And it has integrated Bard with its Lens feature, letting users upload images along with text in their conversations with the chatbot.

Krawczyk said in the post that the company worked with regulators to address privacy concerns before the expansion.

“And as we bring Bard to more regions and languages over time, we’ll continue to use our AI Principles as a guide, incorporate user feedback, and take steps to protect people’s privacy and data,” he wrote.

Earlier this week, Gizmodo reported that Google was named in a proposed class-action lawsuit for allegedly engaging in data-scraping to train its AI, charges the company called “baseless.” A similar lawsuit was filed last month against OpenAI, maker of Bard rival ChatGPT.

Thursday also brought the news that Meta is preparing to unveil a commercial version of its open-source AI tool after having released an earlier version for academics and researchers.

Bard’s expansion is arriving the same week as reports of Musk’s xAI venture and the launch of the latest version of the Claude chatbot from AI firm Anthropic, which is backed by Google.

Anthropic has made a name for itself as a “safety-first” AI company, PYMNTS reported this week, but it is also growing increasingly commercial, with plans to create an AI model that is up to 10 times as powerful as Claude 2 is today.