Google Reveals Bard Is Not Just a Search Engine, But..

JAKARTA - Product lead for Bard, Jack Krawczyk stated that Google's Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not just a search engine, but a creative companion.

During an internal company meeting last week, Jack Krawczyk revealed his plans to move away from chatbots as a replacement for Google Search.

At the same time, Krawczyk answers questions from internal Google forums. One centered on Bard's "Why do we think the first big app should be Search, where it's all about finding the right information?".

To which Krawczyk replied, "I just want to be clear, Bard is not a quest," he said. He said the Bard should have been used as a creative companion.

However, Krawczyk acknowledged that Google cannot stop users from accessing Bard as a search program.

He said Google is still catering to people who want to use it for search, with the company having built a new feature for internal use called Search It.

“We will try to get better at generating queries that are linked there, as well as conveying our trust to users,” said Krawczyk.

Krawczyk added that users will see a tab that says view other drafts, which will lead people away from results such as search.

"However, if you want to go more on a search-oriented journey, we already have a product for that, called Search," said Krawczyk.

Krawczyk's statement is corroborated by the vice president of engineering for Search, Elizabeth Reid, who stated that Bard is focused on extensive use of the Big Language Model (LLM).

“As Jack said, the Bard is completely separate from quests. We have quite a long history of bringing LLM into search (Bert and Mum)," explained Reid, as quoted by CNBC International, Monday, March 6.

"[But while the company is experimenting with LLM, it wants to] keep what search means," he added.

Unlike Microsoft, which invited outside users to test its new Bing chatbot, Google is still testing Bard internally with its employees.

At that meeting last week, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said more details about Bard's public launch would come after this year's Google I/O, the company's annual developer conference.