Google Bard is receiving a huge boost in performance as it will now be powered by the company’s “most capable AI model”, Gemini.
This news may come as a surprise as recent reports circulated claiming that Gemini’s launch was being delayed due to poor performance across multiple languages. But now, it appears Google felt the pressure to bump up the release of its long-awaited (and possibly worthy) ChatGPT rival.
Gemini comes in three different “sizes”; however, we’re only going to focus on the two more powerful versions, Pro and Ultra, because those directly impact Bard. The former, according to the company, can handle a wide variety of tasks. It’s the all-rounder that will be present on other Google platforms. It’s important to mention the company has fine-tuned Gemini Pro on Bard allowing the AI to be more capable at certain actions like understanding prompts, summarizing content, planning things out, and reasoning.
In a demonstration, the tech giant had scientific YouTuber Mark Rober try out the updated Bard. He asked the AI to come up with “the most accurate paper airplane” which then provided a bunch of different designs and optimizations. The video is supposed to show how Bard can now play a bigger role in the creative process.
Availability
Bard with Gemini Pro is available today in English across over 170 countries and territories. A full list of supporting nations can be found on Google’s Help website. At the time of this writing, you can only enter text prompts although there are plans to implement other “modalities” soon. Still, we don't know yet what those modalities will be. What’s more, Google intends to expand the AI’s reach to Europe (users on the continent currently don’t have access), plus grow its language support.
Early next year, Bard will see another upgrade where we’ll see Google install its Gemini Ultra model to the AI. This is the top-of-the-line version specifically designed to handle “highly complex tasks” and accept multimodal inputs such as text, video, and even code. Google explains Ultra will “think more carefully before answering” tough questions as it has better reasoning skills.
Right now, the company is doing some safety checks to make sure the upgrade is the best it can be. When it does come out, the new version will be called Bard Advanced.
It’s unknown exactly when the new Bard will launch, however, Google will soon release a tester program to a select group of users. We contacted Google to ask when and how people can join this tester program. This story will be updated at a later time.
Until then, check out TechRadar's list of the best AI writers for 2023.
