Alphabet, the parent company of Android, Google, and YouTube, saw shares dip roughly 10 percent after Bard, Google’s AI chatbot, showcased during a presentation focusing on artificial intelligence. Investors reacted to a significant error in Bard’s response, a moment that rapidly became a meme across social platforms and a reminder of how powerful AI demonstrations can influence market sentiment in North American tech hubs.
When asked what new discoveries a curious child might hear about, Bard gave a sequence of replies. One response claimed that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) had captured the first images of an exoplanet. That claim is not accurate. The earliest exoplanet images were captured by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, in 2004, a fact long established in astronomical records. This misstep underscored the ongoing challenge for AI systems to distinguish between evolving scientific news and established milestones, a task of growing importance as AI tools become more integrated into education and family discussions in the United States and Canada.
Google’s Bard led the news cycle just ahead of a separate industry moment: Microsoft planned its own event to unveil how it would integrate ChatGPT into its Bing search engine and Edge browser, with an emphasis on redefining search experiences from their Redmond headquarters in Washington. This sequencing highlights the broader industry push toward conversational AI as a core feature in everyday computing, including in consumer markets across Canada and the United States.
Bard draws on Google’s expansive language model family, which powers interactive dialogue and search-related applications. Google has signaled intentions to expand access to chat capabilities to trusted users before a wider public rollout. By contrast, ChatGPT sprang from OpenAI, a project that initially received backing from notable tech figures and investors, including Microsoft, reinforcing how AI initiatives frequently rely on cross-company collaborations and strategic investments to scale quickly across North American markets.