If you haven’t heard about ChatGPT yet, it’s time to crawl out from under that rock you’re living under! AI chatbots are flooding headlines with ways to utilize this technology for every industry, especially digital marketing. Recently, Google announced the upcoming release of their own chatbot, Bard. Now, with two major players on the scene, it’s time to pit them against each other in the battle of the AI chatbots.
Quick Review of ChatGPT
ChatGPT uses machine learning to answer queries in a conversational dialogue. When prompted with a query, ChatGPT can generate content for blog posts and structured data, create code and spreadsheet formulas, and provide simple explanations of complex topics. It provides human-like responses in a conversational dialogue using language models to predict the next word in a series of words. ChatGPT uses Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback (RLHF) to learn the ability to follow directions and generate responses that are satisfactory to humans. While it’s known that ChatGPT’s information is sometimes lacking in recency and accuracy, it’s true that ChatGPT knows enough to be dangerous.
Introducing Bard
In the beginning of February 2023, Google announced their “experimental conversational AI service” which they are calling Bard. To begin with, Google only allowed trusted testers access to Bard and allowed the public to sign up for a waitlist. At the end of March 2023, Google began notifying waitlisters of their chance to test out the Bard “experiment.” Now that Ironmark’s Task Force has access to Bard, this allows us to draw comparisons to what we see as its superior competitor, ChatGPT.
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OpenAI’s ChatGPT vs Google’s Bard
The services of ChatGPT and Bard are similar. Users type in a query to receive a human-like response. However, how the AI-powered chatbots determine the answer, and provide the answer, are different.
Data Source is the Biggest Difference
The most glaring difference between ChatGPT and Bard is the data source.
ChatGPT now uses OpenAI’s GPT-4 model. It is the largest, most powerful language model created to date. GPT-4’s dataset is from September 2021, meaning, ChatGPT knows of no recent events, limiting it to older and possibly out of date information.
Bard is based on the Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA) and was trained on a dataset called Infiniset. Infiniset is a blend of content from the internet chosen to enhance the model’s ability to engage in dialogue. In addition to its dataset training, Bard draws information from the internet, allowing it to have the latest information.
Search and Integrations
Google has clarified that Bard is not intended for Search. In an all-hands meeting for the company, Jack Krawczyk, the product lead for Bard, said, “I just want to be very clear: Bard is not search.” “It’s an experiment that’s a collaborative AI service that we talked about,” Krawczyk said. “The magic that we’re finding in using the product is really around being this creative companion to helping you be the sparkplug for imagination, explore your curiosity, etc.”
Microsoft has announced a multiyear partnership with OpenAI to utilize ChatGPT in “the new Bing,” which is a version of the Bing search engine powered by an updated version of GPT-4. The new Bing touts, “Get answers instead of being overwhelmed by options. Bing looks at search results across the web and summarizes responses to your specific questions and needs.”
According to Google, Bard will have the ability to be integrated into websites, messages platforms, and applications on desktop and mobile. ChatGPT is very easy to integrate and already offers users the possibility to connect the bot to different platforms. ChatGPT currently has integrations with Slack, Google Docs, Microsoft Teams, and more.
Language and Dialogue
Bard uses Google’s LaMDA for dialogue applications, while ChatGPT uses GPT-3.5 and GPT-4. LaMDA is trained on 137 billion parameters and fed with 1.56 trillion words, dialogue data, and documents available on the internet. In addition, LaMDA is programmed to always mold its response on the three key parameters of safety, quality, and groundedness. Bard focuses specifically on generating creative and poetic language, rather than more general text.
GPT-4 is built on three models, as well as an additional model to understand codes. GPT-4 uses reinforcement learning with human feedback. As a reward-based training module, ChatGPT learns from its mistakes and corrects its replies if the same question is asked again.
Citing Sources
Currently, Bard sometimes provides source links for its responses for users to learn more information, depending on the prompt. ChatGPT also does not provide sources for the content it generates. However, Bing’s new GPT-powered chatbot does cite its sources when providing answers on the search results page, showing links to the web content it references.
Use Cases
The uses for AI chatbots are seemingly endless. When comparing Bard to ChatGPT, there are few differences that stand out regarding use cases.
ChatGPT is trained for a task-specific body of text. You can use it for language translation, product descriptions, transcript summaries, and more. Additionally, ChatGPT’s dataset is larger than LaMDA, allowing it to complete more robust tasks like drafting content, creating code, and translating. ChatGPT can also make customer dialogues more personalized, helping companies deliver a better customer experience and enabling companies to save time and money.
Bard’s main goal is to retrieve information in a simple answer versus a search engine results page, like digital assistants such as Alexa and Siri. Because Bard is unique in focusing creative language generation, this makes it a valuable tool for a variety of applications, like writing and publishing, as well as marketing and advertising. According to Google, Bard will also help with tasks such as booking vacations, finding existing reservations and helping with meal planning. When testing the ability to book reservations, it seemed as if it might be possible until Bard said it wasn’t. Perhaps this is a feature Google has not yet released.
Due to ChatGPT’s ability to generate code, as well as text, it arguably has a wider range of use cases than Bard. It is possible that Bard will be able to handle these types of requests in the future, but at the moment ChatGPT takes the cake.
The AI Chatbot Champion
Google has begun to roll out public access to Bard, and the new Bing is only available on Microsoft Edge to users who sign up. Both AI-powered chatbots have a lot to offer for users who are looking for answers to their questions or assistance with generating content. As it looks right now, ChatGPT and the new Bing have a leg up on Google.
ChatGPT is the current reigning champion because of all the features that it can offer, including coding, ease of access, and integrations. Bard and other AI chatbots on the horizon are still ones to watch out for as their features continue to develop and expand, trying to keep up with the genius that is ChatGPT.
Stay tuned as we keep our ears to the ground and bring you updated AI trends and news to remain ahead of the curve. Learn more about how Ironmark is using AI-powered tools to grow businesses like yours.
