Since Google announced Bard, in early February, we have been waiting for the next steps from the search engine company about its more than expected chatbot. Let’s remember that the official announcements of Bard and the new Bing took place just hours apart (Google’s CEO announced his AI on Monday the 6th, while Microsoft did it on Tuesday the 7th, and Google held an event where he talked about Bard , among other matters, on Wednesday 8).
Since then, however, Microsoft has moved much faster than Google. The same day Bing was launched, those from Redmond opened the waiting list to try it, just a week later they began to send the first invitations and, since last week, they already offer immediate access, for which it is only necessary to have a Microsoft account (Hotmail, Outlook, etc.) and access with Microsoft Edge.
Google, however, she has been much more cautious with Bard. As they said in their presentation, the first tests of their AI would be carried out with a small group of trusted testers, a very conservative approach that, however, we can understand when thinking that the company is at stake much more, its leadership position , that Microsoft, that we can almost say that it had nothing to lose. However, even with its failures, Bing has been able to win the interest of millions of people, and has served to substantially improve Microsoft’s image in terms of innovation.
Although I don’t have sources within Google (although it would be a pleasure, if you work at Google and want to be a insiderdon’t stop contacting me, thanks), I am quite clear that Microsoft’s turbo mode with the implementation of artificial intelligence in Bing, Edge, Microsoft 365 and others He has caught the seeker with the changed stepand has forced them to advance in months some announcements and launches that, initially, were reserved for the next Google I / O 2023.
Thus, after a few weeks in which Google seemed knocked out, we have seen how last week it announced its plans to bring AI to Gmail, Google Docs and more, and today we know that Google has finally already opened a waiting list for Bard that, yes, for now only available to US and UK usersand only in American English. If you meet these conditions, you can access it from this link. An interesting detail about the early stage of its current development is that, as you can see in the image above Google does not refer to this version of Bard as Beta, but as Experiment.
As always happens in these cases, there is no information on when the first invitations will be sent, the number of them, the expected date for the arrival of the versions in other languages… in short, a new rather cautious step by Google that, However, it seems that it is already open to new volunteer testers to join, a formula that, from what we have seen, seems to have worked quite well for Microsoft.
