Google is rolling out a new conversational artificial-intelligence service to a select set of testers, and plans a broader public launch in coming weeks, part of the company’s effort to play catch-up with challengers such as OpenAI, creator of the popular chatbot ChatGPT.
The new experimental service, called Bard, generates textual responses to questions posed by users, based on information drawn from the web, Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Google parent Alphabet Inc., said in a blog post published Monday.
In that post, Mr. Pichai also shared a glimpse of new search engine features that will use AI to answer user queries, and said it would open up some of its AI programs to outside developers.
Google’s new products come amid a flurry of announcements by rival Microsoft Corp. about its use of AI technologies developed by OpenAI. Microsoft said last month it is making a multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment in the San Francisco AI startup. It said it would be opening up its tools for developers to build upon, and integrating them into services like its Bing search engine—raising the specter of a new challenge to Google Search’s market power.
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