Alphabet Inc’s market worth decreased by $100 billion on Wednesday as a result of its new chatbot providing false information in a promotional video and a lacklustre corporate event, fueling concerns that the Microsoft Corp. competitor is gaining distance on Alphabet Inc.
During regular trading, Alphabet shares fell as much as 9%, with volumes nearly double 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.
Google’s advertising promoting the chatbot Bard, which made its debut on Monday, had a factual inaccuracy concerning which satellite captured the first images of a planet outside of our solar system. This error was originally discovered by Reuters.
After OpenAI, a company Microsoft is investing $10 billion in, unveiled software in November that amazed users and became a craze in Silicon Valley circles for its shockingly accurate and well-written responses to straightforward questions, Google has been reeling.
Google did not get into specifics regarding how and when it will incorporate Bard into its primary search function during its live-streamed presentation on Wednesday morning. Microsoft said at an event the previous day that a ChatGPT-integrated version of their Bing search had already been made available to the public.
Just before the presentation, Mountain View, California-based Google found Bard’s inaccuracy.
“While Google has been a leader in AI innovation over the last several years, they seemed to have fallen asleep on implementing this technology into their search product,” said Gil Luria, senior software analyst at D.A. Davidson. “Google has been scrambling over the last few weeks to catch up on Search and that caused the announcement yesterday (Tuesday) to be rushed and the embarrassing mess up of posting a wrong answer during their demo.”
On Wednesday, Microsoft stock increased by almost 3%; in after-hours trade, it remained unchanged.
Alphabet promised on Twitter that a brief GIF video showing Bard in action would help to explain complicated 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? is the advertisement’s prompt for Bard. Bard offers many responses, one of which claims that the JWST was used to capture the first images of exoplanets, or worlds outside the solar system. The first pictures of exoplanets were, however, taken by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in 2004, as confirmed by NASA.
“This highlights the importance of a rigorous testing process, something that we’re kicking off this week with our Trusted Tester program,” a Google spokesperson said. “We’ll combine external feedback with our own internal testing to make sure Bard’s responses meet a high bar for quality, safety and groundedness in real-world information.”
