Philips Hue Sync Box 8K launches, multiple bridges coming too

The Pixel 9 Pro and 9 Pro XL performed superbly during my testing, as expected from a pair of phones that cost $999 and up. Navigating Android, opening apps, and playing local and cloud-based graphic-intensive games was a breeze. Apps opened instantly, games loaded fast, and onscreen interactions were fluid. Optional 8K video recording with four times more pixels than standard 4K is a first for Pixel phones. Almost half a decade after its arrival alongside the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra, I find the 8K resolution to be overkill, though avid creators will surely find the 33-megapixel stills within the clips handy.

• Some people have started using ChatGPT and Bard to provide AI therapy due to the chatbots‘ conversational abilities.
• After weeks of using one or the other as my primary daily driver, here’s the lowdown on the devices’ design, performance, and AI-powered experiences.
• Google plans to expand Gemini’s language understanding capabilities and make it ubiquitous.
• As expected, then, trying to extract factual information from Bard is hit-and-miss.

The assumption was that the chatbot would be integrated into Google’s basic search engine, and therefore be free to use. It’s certainly faster than either (though this may be simply because it currently has fewer users) and seems to have as potentially broad capabilities as these other systems. Today, Google is opening up limited access to Bard, its ChatGPT rival, a major step in the company’s attempt to reclaim what many see as lost ground in a new race to deploy AI. Bard will be initially available to select users in the US and UK, with users able to join a waitlist at bard.google.com, though Google says the roll-out will be slow and has offered no date for full public access. Bard is designed to chat naturally on a wide range of topics, provide useful information, explain concepts, and even create original content like poems on request. Other images show the pop-up that appears when Assistant by Bard is enabled, allowing you to ask questions by talking, typing, or sharing photos using the three options at the bottom of the screen.

Funmi joined PC Guide in November 2022, and was a driving force for the site’s ChatGPT coverage. She has a wide knowledge of AI apps, gaming and consumer technology. So, it would be wise to expect at least a free version for the public to use and potentially a tiered payment plan similar to Chat GPT. Also released in May was Gemini 1.5 Flash, a smaller model with a sub-second average first-token latency and a 1 million token context window. The aim is to simplify the otherwise tedious software development tasks involved in producing modern software.

Microsoft’s Bing received plenty of negative attention when the chatbot was seen alternately insulting, gaslighting, and flirting with users, but these outbursts also endeared the bot to many. Bing’s tendency to go off-script secured it a front-page spot in The New York Times and may have helped underscore the experimental nature of the technology. A bit of chaotic energy can be usefully deployed, and Bard doesn’t seem to have any of that. As expected, then, trying to extract factual information from Bard is hit-and-miss. It was also unable to correctly answer a tricky question about the maximum load capacity of a specific washing machine, instead inventing three different but incorrect answers.

Gemini offers other functionality across different languages in addition to translation. For example, it’s capable of mathematical reasoning and summarization in multiple languages. Gemini Pro is available in more than 230 countries and territories, while Gemini Advanced is available in more than 150 countries at the time of this writing. However, there are age limits in place to comply with laws and regulations that exist to govern AI.

What is ChatGPT? The world’s most popular AI chatbot explained

Let‘s dive into everything we know so far about Google Bard‘s release timeline, launch plans, early access, capabilities, and how it stacks up to other chatbots leading the AI race. When Google announced its intention to launch a chatbot last month, Bard incorrectly answered a question during a promotional video, Reuters reported. The mistake scared some investors and coincided with a rout for the share price of Google’s parent company Alphabet, erasing $100 billion from Alphabet’s market value. At Google I/O 2023, the company announced Gemini, a large language model created by Google DeepMind.

If publishers do choose to block Bard, that could greatly limit the utility of its connection to the internet when providing answers. On the other hand, this could leave Bard in the good graces of publishers compared to Bing Chat and ChatGPT, which could ultimately prove a competitive advantage in the future. For what it’s worth, Google says you should use this feature whenever you need to verify information. In an interview with the BBC, Google UK executive Debbie Weinstein warned users that they should still Google things when looking for facts to answer questions. She instead describes Bard as a collaborative, creative tool that you should use once you already have the information you need. Google is quick to point out some of Bard’s responses may be inaccurate.

Add Me is a particularly notable new feature, allowing the photographer to join a group photo without sacrificing quality. This particular bit will come particularly handy during group outings, as you or the giftee will no longer have to ask strangers to snap photos with your phone. Before writing for Tom’s Guide, Malcolm worked as a fantasy football analyst writing for several sites and also had a brief stint working for Microsoft selling laptops, Xbox products and even the ill-fated Windows phone. He is passionate about video games and sports, though both cause him to yell at the TV frequently.

It could understand the contents of certain YouTube videos, making it quicker and easier to extract information from such clips. In fact, Gemini replaces both Bard and Duet AI (the latter was essentially the rival to Copilot Pro in Google google bard ai launch date Workspace). Now Gemini houses all this technology (and much more) under one very different and more all-encompassing umbrella. Unfortunately, while Bard is now available in a ton of places, there are a couple of notable exceptions.

Instead, Google is taking a more measured, phased approach to launching Bard. This began with closed beta testing access given to just a small group of carefully selected testers. Specifically, when asked for discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope, Bard incorrectly stated it provided the first images of a planet outside our solar system. As many quickly pointed out, the first exoplanet images actually came from the European Southern Observatory‘s Very Large Telescope in 2004.

Does Gemini include images in its answers?

Try out the latest updates — and share your feedback to help us make your experience even better. On Android, Gemini is a new kind of assistant that uses generative AI to collaborate with you and help you get things done. Similarly, Bard could interact with info from the likes of Maps and even YouTube.

But the proving of a chatbot is in the chatting, and as Google offers more users access to Bard, this collective stress test will better reveal the system’s capabilities and liabilities. Over time, expect the Bard interface option to appear almost anywhere Google search does. The AI assistant will sit ready to answer questions at your fingertips. Google will determine each next phase based on data and feedback, not preset timelines.

• When people think of Google, they often think of turning to us for quick factual answers, like “how many keys does a piano have?
• There are three versions of the Gemini multimodal AI model with Gemini Pro the mid-tier version that currently powers Google Bard.
• While it isn’t meant for text generation, it serves as a viable alternative to ChatGPT or Gemini for code generation.
• It automatically generates two photos, but if you’d like to see four, you can click the „generate more“ option.
• It’s unclear if this would be as part of a standalone Bard app or as part of the Google Search mobile app — or if we will ever even see it.
• Plus, there’s building evidence that Google has big plans for Bard’s future.

The only thing we know for certain is that it will be powered by Google Gemini Ultra, the most advanced Google AI model. However, at the time of writing only select Google account holders have been invited. Users can join a waitlist on the tool’s main site, but only with personal accounts – not workspace ones. Previews of both Gemini 1.5 Pro and Gemini 1.5 Flash are available in over 200 countries and territories. The vendor plans to add context caching — to ensure users only have to send parts of a prompt to a model once — in June.

Repeating the query did retrieve the correct information, but users would be unable to know which was which without checking an authoritative source like the machine’s manual. Google also highlighted Bard‘s integration into its Pixel phones and Google Lens visual search. On mobile, tapping the Google app icon will surface a chat option powered by Bard. Users can easily switch between traditional search and AI-enhanced chat.

This first version of Gemini Advanced reflects our current advances in AI reasoning and will continue to improve. As we add new and exclusive features, Gemini Advanced users will have access to expanded multimodal capabilities, more interactive coding features, deeper data analysis capabilities and more. Gemini Advanced is available today in more than 150 countries and territories in English, and we’ll expand it to more languages over time. Microsoft began using ChatGPT technology in its search engine Bing in January. Most recently in January, the company announced a multi-year multibillion dollar investment in OpenAI to “accelerate” AI breakthroughs, following previous investments in 2019 and 2021.

During the announcement on February 6, 2023, Google stated that Bard would be launched more broadly „in the coming weeks.“ No wonder Google CEO Sundar Pichai called Bard the „next generation of search“ when unveiling it. Many view conversational AI like Bard as the future of Google‘s core business. Just ask Bard a question in the search bar, and it can provide an immediate response drawn from the wealth of knowledge on the web. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. Rather than scouring links yourself, Bard aims to have an interactive discussion to satisfy your information needs.

Fake AI-generated images are becoming a serious problem and Google Bard’s AI image-generating capabilities thanks to Adobe Firefly could eventually be a contributing factor. But Google is making it easier to detect these fake images with Fact Check Explorer. This Google feature has been around for a few years, but it just got an upgrade where you can upload images to check if they’re fakes. Google Bard can now respond using images to add context to text responses, and after testing Bard’s new image capabilities we came away relatively impressed. We also tested out its new Export to Sheets feature and while it has a couple of quirks it’s a serious time saver. For the latest on what Bard has added, check out our report on 3 ways Google Bard AI is getting better.

Google intends to improve the feature so that Gemini can remain multimodal in the long run. The propensity of Gemini to generate hallucinations and other fabrications and pass them along to users as truthful is also a cause for concern. This has been one of the biggest risks with ChatGPT responses since its inception, as it is with other advanced AI tools. In addition, since Gemini doesn’t always understand context, its responses might not always be relevant to the prompts and queries users provide. The Google Gemini models are used in many different ways, including text, image, audio and video understanding.

While Google announced Gemini Ultra, Pro and Nano that day, it did not make Ultra available at the same time as Pro and Nano. Initially, Ultra was only available to select customers, developers, partners and experts; it was fully released in February 2024. Marketed as a „ChatGPT alternative with superpowers,“ Chatsonic is an AI chatbot powered by Google Search with an AI-based text generator, Writesonic, that lets users discuss topics in real time to create text or images. Upon Gemini’s release, Google touted its ability to generate images the same way as other generative AI tools, such as Dall-E, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion. Gemini currently uses Google’s Imagen 2 text-to-image model, which gives the tool image generation capabilities.

This allows for 8K content at up to 60Hz, or more importantly, 4K content at up to 120Hz, meaning this will work with consoles such as the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. The Philips Hue Sync Box is a fun way to extend what’s on your TV to the lights in your room, but the original box has lagged behind on features for a while now. Today, Philips has announced a new Hue Sync Box that supports HDMI 2.1 and more. Having worked in tech journalism for a ludicrous 17 years, Mark is now attempting to break the world record for the number of camera bags hoarded by one person. He was previously Cameras Editor at both TechRadar and Trusted Reviews, Acting editor on Stuff.tv, as well as Features editor and Reviews editor on Stuff magazine.

How Bard Compares to Leading AI Chatbot Rivals

Learn about the top LLMs, including well-known ones and others that are more obscure. This generative AI tool specializes in original text generation as well as rewriting content and avoiding plagiarism. It handles other simple tasks to aid professionals in writing assignments, such as proofreading. Examples of Gemini chatbot competitors that generate original text or code, as mentioned by Audrey Chee-Read, principal analyst at Forrester Research, as well as by other industry experts, include the following.

Bard was designed to help with follow-up questions — something new to search. It also had a share-conversation function and a double-check function that helped users fact-check generated results. — we’ve gotten quite a bit of feedback and have adapted https://chat.openai.com/ quickly to make your experience with it even better. We recently moved Bard to PaLM 2, a far more capable large language model, which has enabled many of our recent improvements — including advanced math and reasoning skills and coding capabilities.

Google previewed this design during its October event, at which it launched the Google Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro. Google’s management has been moving fast to get Bard out the door after the company was caught off guard by the arrival of OpenAI’s ChatGPT late last year. A spokesperson said that the company doesn’t intend to signpost Bard on the Google search page itself; users will only be able to access it by going to bard.google.com and signing up on the waitlist. Then, in December 2023, Google upgraded Gemini again, this time to Gemini, the company’s most capable and advanced LLM to date. Specifically, Gemini uses a fine-tuned version of Gemini Pro for English.

At the February 8 AI event where Bard was unveiled, Google also announced AI tools being integrated in Google Maps. In terms of the quality of responses, we performed a Bing vs Google Bard face-off to find out which of the two AI chatbots is smarter on a wide range of topics. Interestingly, it turned out to be a tie, but we like how Bard often provided more context and detail in its responses. And as more concerns about plagiarism are raised, the more likely governments do something about it. Is already looking at a new AI regulation bill that could force Bard and ChatGPT to cite sources when they produce responses.

Bard was first announced on February 6 in a statement from Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai. Google Bard was released a little over a month later, on March 21, 2023. When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or service, we may earn affiliate commissions.

There are tons of ways to take advantage of the virtual assistant, so it’s best to give yourself a little time to get used to its breadth of talents. After a couple of weeks of using it, I feel like I have barely scratched the surface. I spent quite a bit of time interacting with Gemini Live and was impressed by every encounter. It gave me tips to optimize my workout routine and helped me prepare for an important meeting with useful suggestions how to communicate my ideas more concisely. Having a virtual assistant, one I could actually talk to and who could offer advice, helped me stay focused while juggling between several work projects.

Much like with other chatbot AIs, Bard is designed to be conversational. That means users interact with it by typing in a query or request into a text box, and then the AI — in this case, Google Bard — will churn out a response using a conversational tone. Initially, Google limited access to Bard AI but now the experimental AI is available in 180 countries and three languages.

That opened the door for other search engines to license ChatGPT, whereas Gemini supports only Google. Google Gemini works by first being trained on a massive corpus of data. After training, the model uses several neural network techniques to be able to understand content, answer questions, generate text and produce outputs. Gemini integrates NLP capabilities, which provide the ability to understand and process language. It’s able to understand and recognize images, enabling it to parse complex visuals, such as charts and figures, without the need for external optical character recognition (OCR). It also has broad multilingual capabilities for translation tasks and functionality across different languages.

It’s now available in most of the world, and in the most widely spoken languages. And we’re launching new features to help you better customize your experience, boost your creativity and get more done. There are three versions of the Gemini multimodal AI model with Gemini Pro the mid-tier version that currently powers Google Bard. This model recently took Bard to second place in a popular leaderboard of all chatbot services just behind GPT-4-Turbo. Bard also integrated with several Google apps and services, including YouTube, Maps, Hotels, Flights, Gmail, Docs and Drive, enabling users to apply the AI tool to their personal content.

As a freelancer, he’s contributed to titles including The Sunday Times, FourFourTwo and Arena. And in a former life, he also won The Daily Telegraph’s Young Sportswriter of the Year. But that was before he discovered the strange joys of getting up at 4am for a photo shoot in London’s Square Mile. Further updates to the AI introduced the ability to listen to Bard’s responses, change their tone using various options, pin and rename conversations, and even share conversations via a public link. In short, Bard was conceived as a next-gen development of Google Search that could change the way search engines were used. Google has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into Anthropic, an AI startup similar to Microsoft-backed OpenAI.

He proudly sports many tattoos, including an Arsenal tattoo, in honor of the team that causes him to yell at the TV the most. One other thing you may have noticed is that Google Bard falls a bit short in providing sources for the information it pulls. While it does cite Tom’s Guide and Phone Arena (albeit incorrectly), there are no links provided for those sources. That is a stark contrast from the new Bing chatbot powered by GPT-4, which still gets things wrong but at least gives you the links from which it’s (theoretically sourcing information). Google has said that Bard’s recent updates will ensure that it cites sources more frequently and with greater accuracy.

Sign up to try Bard

As a multimodal model, Gemini enables cross-modal reasoning abilities. That means Gemini can reason across a sequence of different input data types, including audio, images and text. For example, Gemini can understand handwritten notes, graphs and diagrams to solve complex problems.

If you ask for “must-see sights in New Orleans,” Bard will give you a text list supplemented by pictures of those spots. According to Google, the move to PaLM 2 has enabled some of Bard’s latest improvements, such as its enhanced coding capabilities and advanced math and reasoning skills. In fact, coding has become one of the most popular features of Bard in recent weeks. The phone exceeded Chat GPT all of them, constantly producing photos (including selfies) and videos with exceptional quality, including in scenes with less-than-ideal lighting. Getting quality shots of faraway objects by zooming in was also easy. Like gravity, an up-to-date Android OS with no bloatware and many years’ worth of guaranteed updates is guaranteed for Pixel phones, and the latest ones are no exception.

While it isn’t meant for text generation, it serves as a viable alternative to ChatGPT or Gemini for code generation. One concern about Gemini revolves around its potential to present biased or false information to users. Any bias inherent in the training data fed to Gemini could lead to wariness among users.

For code, a version of Gemini Pro is being used to power the Google AlphaCode 2 generative AI coding technology. Like most AI chatbots, Gemini can code, answer math problems, and help with your writing needs. To access it, all you have to do is visit the Gemini website and sign into your Google account. When Google first launched Bard two months ago, it failed to impress anyone who had spent any time using ChatGPT. Google did refer to Bard as an “experiment,” but its capabilities simply didn’t match up with those of its competition.

It’s still in the early stages, so you might not get access right away. But it does mean your Android phone should eventually get an AI upgrade. In order to use Bard you’ll want to sign up at bard.google.com and enter your Gmail address. For step-by-step instructions on signing up, see our guide on how to use Bard. Google is giving web publishers the option to hide their content from Bard.

Speaking or texting with it feels mind-bendingly close to having a conversation with an actual person. I was particularly struck by my ability to interrupt the assistant with follow-up queries as it was responding to my original question. With more natural communication and a wide selection of natural-sounding voices, Gemini Live’s speech feels genuinely conversational, rather than automated. Don’t forget, Alphabet (Google’s parent company) and Google both own several other companies — including YouTube.

The multimodal nature of Gemini also enables these different types of input to be combined for generating output. After rebranding Bard to Gemini on Feb. 8, 2024, Google introduced a paid tier in addition to the free web application. However, users can only get access to Ultra through the Gemini Advanced option for $20 per month.

Google likely debuted at least some of these at I/O 2023 with the announcement of Search Generative Experience (SGE). This new search experiment adds Google Bard-like spotlights to Google’s existing search product, integrating generative AI into Google Search. It even allows you to generate AI images directly from Google search on your phone or web browser. Google’s next-generation artificial intelligence chatbot Bard Advanced, will be a subscription service according to CEO Sundar Pichai. This has been suspected since Google first announced its Gemini family of models in December last year, but this is the first time the company has said anything officially. Then, as part of the initial launch of Gemini on Dec. 6, 2023, Google provided direction on the future of its next-generation LLMs.

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. Bard seeks to combine the breadth of the world’s knowledge with the power, intelligence and creativity of our large language models. It draws on information from the web to provide fresh, high-quality responses. Since then we’ve continued to make investments in AI across the board, and Google AI and DeepMind are advancing the state of the art. Today, the scale of the largest AI computations is doubling every six months, far outpacing Moore’s Law.