An anonymous reader shares a report: On Tuesday, Google initiated the process of opening up Bard to the world by inviting users in the US and UK to sign up for access. It first demoed Bard in February, in a clear response to seeing ChatGPT take the world by storm over the holiday period, but is only now opening up access. Unfortunately for the search giant, the beta-ness of Bard is clear, with a first batch of adopters seemingly underwhelmed by its capabilities when compared with OpenAI’s GPT-4 technology. Bard has had the odd hiccup already. A possible mistake made by the chatbot during its demo launch last month was followed by a $100 billion cratering in parent company Alphabet’s valuation. Now testers say the current version of Bard isn’t living up to the competition.

“I’ve been playing with Google Bard for a while today and I never thought I’d say this, but… Bing is way ahead of Google right now (at this specific chat feature),” tech YouTuber Marques Brownlee tweeted on Tuesday. Ethan Mollick, associate professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches entrepreneurship and innovation, added that although it’s early, “Google’s Bard does not seem as capable as a learning tool as Bing or GPT-4.” Mollick notes that “Google’s Bard loses” to its rival “by a lot” in poetry, struggling far more in its potential to generate a sestina, fixed verse form from France made up of 39 lines. A prompt to get Bard to generate a synopsis of a “Star Wars” movie in the style of filmmaker David Lynch, known for his off-kilter storytelling, ended up producing a bog-standard “Star Wars” plot. Bard also has issues handling word puzzles, an area where AIs powered by large language models should theoretically excel. Take Twofer Goofer, an online puzzle that involves users figuring out what a pair of mystery rhyming words are through slightly obtuse prompts and clues.

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Source: Slashdot – Google Bard is Worse Than ChatGPT, Say Early Testers