Google launching its own artificial intelligence bot, known as Bard

Google is launching its own artificial intelligence bot known as Bard, a direct competitor to ChatGPT.

In a blog post Monday, the California-based company says it will soon give a select number of "trusted testers" access to the artificial intelligence prototype it has been working on in some form for the last six years.

The company says it plans to make the service "more widely available to the public in the coming weeks."

The news comes on the heels of the launch of ChatGPT, the world's first mainstream artificial intelligence tool that has earned a slew of praise and criticism in its first few weeks of existence. 

Similar to ChatGPT, Bard will give users nuanced answers to complex or open-ended queries. ChatGPT was created by a company called Open AI, which got a $1 billion investment from Microsoft in 2019.

Since launching in November, ChatGPT has already processed more than 100 million queries, giving users human-like answers to basic questions by searching the internet and other databases for relevant information based on what was uploaded to its internal system.

The technology behind Google's chatbot is known as LaMDA, a conversation and language simulator reportedly so advanced that one former engineer of the company made headlines last year by describing it as "sentient."

Google says even users who don't use the chatbot directly can expect to see its impact on the company's core search tool soon.

In a blog post, CEO Sundar Pichai said the difference between a Google search today versus one powered by artificial intelligence is akin to a user asking "how many keys does a piano have" versus someone asking "is the piano or guitar easier to learn, and how much practice does each need?"

"AI can be helpful in these moments, synthesizing insights for questions where there's no one right answer," Pichai said.

"Soon, you'll see AI-powered features in Search that distill complex information and multiple perspectives into easy-to-digest formats, so you can quickly understand the big picture and learn more from the web."