OpenAI's ChatGPT has become a global phenomenon and one of the fastest-growing consumer products of all time, while Google's Bard feels like an afterthought. The chatbot continues to add new features, including access to your data across other Google products, but its answers and information rarely seem to compare to ChatGPT and other bots that use GPT-3 and GPT-4.

However, Bard's case may be getting stronger: Starting today, for English-speaking users in 170 countries, Bard is now powered by Google's new Gemini model, which Google says is in many ways comparable to, or even better than, OpenAI's technology. (Google says Gemini will be available in more languages ​​and countries "in the near future.")

Bard is now running GeminiPro, the middle level of the Gemini series. Ultra is the largest and slowest, but the most powerful; Nano is small and fast and is used to perform device tasks; Pro is somewhere in the middle. In fact, it's fast, efficient, and as powerful as possible.

Sissie Hsiao, who is responsible for Bard at Google, said at a press conference that Gemini represents the biggest and best upgrade to Bard to date. "It will have significant improvements in all functions. People will find that the product has become better," Google CEO Sundar Pichai said. "It understands their intentions better and answers better." It is more factual and of higher quality. If you want to write code, it's even better! "

Right now, Bard is just a chatbot: you type in a message and it replies. But the upcoming new version of Bard may be even more powerful. Next year, Google plans to launch a preview version of "BardAdvanced" powered by GeminiUltra. GeminiUltra is also a multimodal version of the model, meaning that in addition to text, it can accept and create images, audio, and video.

Non-text interactions are where Gemini really shines

Non-text interaction is the real highlight of Gemini, said Demis Hassabis, head of Google DeepMind. "We built it from the beginning to be natively multimodal," he said. "That's one of the new capabilities it has... it enables seamless integration and inference across modalities."

Google demos include YouTube user Mark Rober using Bard to guide him through making the perfect paper airplane - including taking photos of his designs to get feedback from the AI ​​- and parents uploading photos of their children's homework to get help figuring out where to focus on their math problems.

However, these are just demos and promotional videos. Pichai said he sees the launch as both a big moment for Bard and the beginning of the Gemini era. Still, if Google's benchmarks are correct, the new model may have made Bard as good a chatbot as ChatGPT. This is already a very remarkable achievement.