Google loses $100 Billion after its new chatbot Bard messes up an answer in a promotional ad | Digit

Google was promoting its new chatbot Bard on Twitter when it gave a wrong answer to the person who asked “What new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) can I tell my 9-year-old about?”. Bard replied in many answers including one suggesting the JWST took the very first pictures of a planet outside the Earth’s solar system, which is inaccurate. The first pictures of planets were taken by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in 2004, as confirmed by NASA.

Google’s parent company has lost $100 Billion due to this blunder and the shares of Alphabet dropped 8% from $8.59 a share to $99.05. It was one of the most actively traded shares on U.S. exchanges. 

Google was advertising Bard on Monday when Reuters spotted the error in the answer about which satellite took the first picture of a planet outside the Earth’s Solar System. 

Google hosted the event after a day when Microsoft introduced ChatGPT integrated with Microsoft’s browser Bing but after this blunder, analysts said that Bard’s AI search event lacked details on how it is going to cope with Microsoft’s ChatGPT challenge.

Dennis Dick, founder and market structure analyst at Triple D Trading said, “This is a hiccup here and they’re severely punishing the stock for it, which is justified because obviously everybody is pretty excited to see what Google’s going to counter with Microsoft coming out with a pretty decent product.” 

“This highlights the importance of a rigorous testing process, something that we’re kicking off this week with our Trusted Tester program,” a Google spokesperson said. “We’ll combine external feedback with our own internal testing to make sure Bard’s responses meet a high bar for quality, safety and groundedness in real-world information.” 

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