Google's presentation of a new AI-powered search bot hit a snag after it provided false information in a promotional video, causing investors to lose confidence.
Alphabet, the parent company of Google, lost $100 billion in market value on Wednesday, fueling concerns that it is losing momentum to rival Microsoft.
Google's problems started when Reuters discovered an inaccuracy in its advertisement for the chatbot Bard, which launched on Monday.
Alphabet shares were unchanged after hours after falling as much as 9% during regular trading. Microsoft's stock rose almost 3% before reversing gains. They were also flat in after-hours trade.
Alphabet tweeted a brief gif video showing Bard in action, saying that it would help explain complex concepts, but it instead provided an incorrect response.
Bard is asked in the advertisement, "What new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) can I tell my 9-year-old about?" Bard responds with a number of answers, one of which is that the JWST was used to take the first images of planets outside the Earth's solar system, known as exoplanets. However, the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) captured the first images of exoplanets in 2004, as confirmed by NASA.
The Bard commercial has been viewed over a million times on Twitter at the time of writing.
Bard's blunder was revealed soon before Google's presentation, which likewise failed to impress investors.
"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."
OpenAI has a leg up on the competition with its ChatGPT chatbot, which was released in November and employs AI to generate human-like prose. ChatGPT's diverse set of applications, status as the fastest-growing consumer app in history, and ability to disrupt internet searches have prompted competitors to abandon the sluggish and cautious approach that has dominated AI research for years.
Microsoft, Google, and the Chinese search giant Baidu are all making rapid progress with their AI technologies. Google debuted its own AI-powered chatbot for testers on Monday.
Google's chatbot, Bard, is driven by LaMDA, the company's own AI-based language learning model that is similar to ChatGPT's technology.
To be fair, Bard is not the only chatbot that provided incorrect answers. ChatGPT has fallen to racial and gender biases in some situations, as well as offering wrong or confusing information when questioned about niche topics.
