Google is launching an AI chatbot called Bard, in a move to rival the popular, and much debated AI, ChatGPT from Open AI. Google is building Bard on its existing large language model Lamda, which one Google engineer claimed to be 'sentient' due to its eerie similarity to human responses.

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According to Google, Bard will be rolled out to the public in the coming weeks. Currently, it's open to a group of test users.

"We're releasing it initially with our lightweight model version of LaMDA. This much smaller model requires significantly less computing power, enabling us to scale to more users, allowing for more feedback. We'll combine external feedback with our own internal testing to make sure Bard's responses meet a high bar for quality, safety and groundedness in real-world information. We're excited for this phase of testing to help us continue to learn and improve Bard's quality and speed," wrote Google CEO Sundar Pichai in a recent blog post. 

Google also announced that AI will be used more to refine the existing search engine. 

"When people think of Google, they often think of turning to us for quick factual answers, like "how many keys does a piano have?" But increasingly, people are turning to Google for deeper insights and understanding — like, "is the piano or guitar easier to learn, and how much practice does each need?" Learning about a topic like this can take a lot of effort to figure out what you really need to know, and people often want to explore a diverse range of opinions or perspectives. AI can be helpful in these moments, synthesizing insights for questions where there's no one right answer," wrote Pichai in his blog post.

Google's Bard announcement comes in the wake of widespread rumours that Microsoft will soon integrate the AI chatbot ChatGPT into its search engine Bing as a result of a multi-billion dollar investment in OpenAI.