It’s been a rocky start for Google’s ChatGPT competitor so far. The company’s AI chatbot, Bard was caught making a factual mistake in its very first demo. This comes only days after Bard was announced just a couple of days ago by CEO Sundar Pichai.
After announcing that testing has begun for a select group of individuals, Google shared a GIF of the Chatbot answering the question, “What discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope can I tell my 9-year-old about?” Which, Bard offered an answer in three bullet points, one of which stated that the telescope “took the very first pictures of a planet outside of our solar system.”
This led several astronomers to rally on Twitter to point out the mistake, stating that the first image was taken in 2004, long before James Webb Telescope was launched into space. Astrophysicist Grant Tremblay tweeted, “Not to be a ~well, actually~ jerk, and I’m sure Bard will be impressive, but for the record: JWST did not take ‘the very first image of a planet outside our solar system.’”
Making things worse, Bruce Macintosh, director of the University of California Observatories at UC Santa Cruz also pointed out the mistake, saying “Speaking as someone who imaged an exoplanet 14 years before JWST was launched, it feels like you should find a better example?”
In a follow-up Tweet, Grant Tremblay further elaborated on the matter saying, “I do love and appreciate that one of the most powerful companies on the planet is using a JWST search to advertise their LLM. Awesome! But ChatGPT etc., while spooky and impressive, are often very confidently wrong. Will be interesting to see a future where LLMs self-error check.”
Regardless though, the damage seems to be done, with users sharing screenshots of Open AI’s ChatGPT answering the same question with all the correct facts.
As far as Bard is concerned, The Verge did reach out to Google to have their say on the matter. The tech giant replied with the following statement – “This highlights the importance of a rigorous testing process, something that we’re kicking off this week with our Trusted Tester program. We’ll combine external feedback with our internal testing to make sure Bard’s responses meet a high bar for quality, safety and groundedness in real-world information.”
