'Things can go wrong': What CEO Sundar Pichai told Google employees after Bard AI launch

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has sent a memo to his employees after launching the Bard AI to general public, but in a limited capacity. Currently, Google's response to ChatGPT is being offered only to select users in the United States and United Kingdom. Pichai has thanked the development team behind Bard AI.

The memo from Sundar Pichai to Googlers is about the expansion of access to Bard. Bard was first revealed to the public in February but was off to rocky start. During the demo, it presented a factually inaccurate output.

Google is ready to roll out Bard to the public, even if it is in a controlled way. Google account holders in the US and UK can sign up for it at bard.google.com. The users will have to wait for an invite from Google to test out the Bard AI. 

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In a memo to Google employees, sourced by CNBC, Sundar Pichai reveals that the Bard team has spent a lot of time working on this project and 80,000 Googlers have helped test it internally.

Pichai clarified to his employees that even if Bard has rolled out to the public, 'things will go wrong'. However, he emphasized the need for user feedback to improve the product and the underlying technology.

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Here's the memo Google CEO Sundar Pichai sent to Googlers:

Hi, Googlers

Last week was an important week in Al with our announcements around Cloud, Developer, and Workspace. There’s even more to come this week as we begin to expand access to Bard, which we first announced in February.

Starting today, people in the US and the UK can sign up at bard.google.com. This is just a first step, and we’ll continue to roll it out to more countries and languages over time.

I’m grateful to the Bard team who has probably spent more time with Bard than anything or anyone else over the past few weeks. Also hugely appreciative of the 80,000 Googlers who have helped test it in the company-wide dogfood. We should be proud of this work and the years of tech breakthroughs that led us here, including our 2017 Transformer research and foundational models such as PalM and BERT.

Even after all this progress, we’re still in the early stages of a long Al journey. As more people start to use Bard and test its capabilities, they’ll surprise us. Things will go wrong. But the user feedback is critical to improving the product and the underlying technology.

We’ve taken a responsible approach to development, including inviting 10,000 trusted testers from a variety of backgrounds and perspectives, and we’ll continue to welcome all the feedback that’s about to come our way. We will learn from it and keep iterating and improving.

For now, I’m excited to see how Bard sparks more creativity and curiosity in the people who use it. And I look forward to sharing the full breadth of our progress in Al to help people, businesses and communities as we approach I/O in May.

—Sundar

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