Bard is an AI tool hastily created by Google over the last few months to compete with ChatGPT, a free app that can generate text in response to a prompt, including articles, essays, jokes and even poetry.
The popularity of ChatGPT has skyrocketed in recent months, leading Microsoft - which invested around $10bn in the app's developers, OpenAI, in January this year - to incorporate the technology into a new version of its search engine, Bing.
Announcing the public release of its competing app in a blog post, Google VPs Sissie Hsiao and Eli Collins said the Bard chatbot can be used to “boost your productivity, accelerate your ideas and fuel your curiosity”.
US and UK consumers can now join a waiting list for English-language access to Bard, a program that was previously open to approved testers only.
At its inaugural public unveiling last month, the chatbot faced heavy criticism after it was shown to provide inaccurate information in various promotional...