Microsoft 1 Google 0: a bug in the search engine's new AI tool tanks its shares

Google has received the first wound in its war with Microsoft and ChatGPT for leadership in artificial intelligence. Google's rush to present its new AI system, Bard, made them overlook a mistake in the announcement. The company's shares plummeted as the glitch set off red flags among investors.

Pichai's article announcing the creation of Bard included an advertisement showing how the AI works in the search engine. As an example, Bard was asked to explain the discoveries of the James Webb Space Telescope to a nine-year-old child. Google's new tool mistakenly replied that the telescope was the first to capture a planet outside the Earth's solar system, but that honor goes to the European Extremely Large Telescope.

Bard's mistake cost Google 7%

The mistake caused a 7% drop in the company's share price. Following Microsoft's last-minute press conference on Tuesday, Google's Vice President Prabhakar Raghavan did a presentation on Bard in Europe on Wednesday. He conducted a trial run and announced several AI-induced improvements to maps, translation, and its image recognition tool Lens. Investors were not pleased with these announcements.

Google's first casualty in the war for AI leadership

Since Google's announcement on Monday, both companies have been attacking each other with new and swift moves to position their product in the war for AI leadership. A few minutes after the post on the search engine's blog and social media, Microsoft scheduled a press conference for the following day in which it made official its partnership with OpenAi, the creator of ChatGPT, and the integration of ChatGPT into its search engines. Google then announced the European launch of Bard for Wednesday.

There will be many more battles and updates in the war on AI, but for the moment, the first blood was shed by Google.