Google has made some more big updates to Bard.
Gemini Pro, one of Google’s most advanced models, is now available right within Bard in 40 languages and most countries. Previously, it was only available in English in the U.S. (Bard powered by Gemini Pro now also outranks versions of GPT-4 in performance.)
And, Bard now has image generation capabilities powered by Google’s new Imagen 2 image generation model. This is a highly advanced new model that generates even more detailed images. It’s also built for safety, with technical guardrails and digital watermarking to identify AI-generated images.
What do these updates mean for Bard’s position among AI tools—and Google’s overall position in the AI arms race?
On Episode 82 of The Marketing AI Show, I got the answers from Marketing AI Institute founder/CEO Paul Roetzer.
Google appears to be taking a more aggressive approach to AI in order to compete with Microsoft and OpenAI.
Google had image generation technology at the same time tools like Midjourney and DALL-E were taking the world by storm. But they didn’t release it commercially. Now, Imagen 2 is baked right into Bard from the beginning.
This is just a preview of what’s to come. There’s speculation that soon we’ll be getting access to Gemini Ultra, the most powerful version of Gemini.
“In the coming months, we’re going to start really seeing the full picture of what Google’s vision is for Bard,” says Roetzer.
A lot of that vision depends on what they do with Gemini Ultra. (Rumors hint that it may be a a pay to play subscription.)
One advantage that Google has, which no one else does: DeepMind. DeepMind is the AI lab they acquired in 2014. It forms the backbone of Google’s AI work today. DeepMind built AlphaGo, the AI system that beat a human champion at the game of Go, which is more complex than chess.
It’s clear they’re envisioning building the same type of technology into Gemini, giving it advanced abilities to reason, complete tasks, have chain of thought, and solve problems.
The lesson here?
“You cannot bet against Google. They have more data than anyone probably, and they have more AI history and capabilities than most companies, if not all of them,” says Roetzer.
That means you need to add Bard into your mix of AI tools that you’re regularly testing. It’s getting very good, very fast. Not to mention, it’s free. (For now.)