In an exciting development, Google’s parent company Alphabet is taking its groundbreaking artificial intelligence chatbot, Bard, to new heights. After its successful launch in the US and the UK earlier this year, Bard is now expanding its reach to Europe and Brazil, intensifying its competition with Microsoft’s ChatGPT. These cutting-edge chatbots represent the latest advancements in generative AI, capable of responding to queries in a remarkably human-like manner.

However, Bard’s European launch faced a temporary setback due to privacy concerns raised by the Irish Data Protection Commission, the main data regulator in the EU. The commission expressed reservations about the level of information provided by Google regarding the protection of Europeans’ privacy. To address these concerns, Google engaged in discussions with the watchdogs, emphasizing transparency, choice, and control. Additionally, users now have the option to opt out of data collection, ensuring their privacy preferences are respected.

Google has also introduced exciting new features to Bard, available worldwide. Users can now enjoy the chatbot’s spoken responses and prompt it with images. With Bard’s expanded language capabilities, users can collaborate in over 40 languages, including Arabic, Chinese, German, Hindi, and Spanish. This enhanced functionality allows users to explore ideas from different perspectives, listen to correct word pronunciations, or even enjoy poems and scripts.

Furthermore, Google has empowered users to customize Bard’s responses by adjusting the tone and style, choosing from options like simple, long, short, professional, or casual. Other notable additions include the ability to pin or rename conversations, export code to various platforms, and incorporate images into prompts.

The rise of generative AI has sparked a wave of investment, with companies pouring billions into advertising and cloud revenue. Notably, Mistral AI, a one-month-old start-up, secured an impressive £86 million in seed funding to develop and train large language models. Meanwhile, tech visionary Elon Musk recently announced a new venture, assembling a team of engineers from OpenAI and Google to further advance AI while advocating for regulation in the industry.

In this dynamic landscape, American AI company Anthropic has launched Claude 2, a rival chatbot to ChatGPT. Claude 2 boasts the unique ability to summarize novel-sized blocks of text and employs a safety method known as “Constitutional AI,” which adheres to a set of principles for responsible text generation.

While the novelty of AI chatbots may be waning, recent web user statistics indicate a decline in monthly traffic and unique visitors to ChatGPT’s website in June. Nevertheless, the introduction of Bard’s expanded features and its global expansion promise to keep the AI chatbot competition alive and thriving.

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