Google's new AI lost the company $100bn with just one question

Google’s new AI chatbot has already managed to wipe £100 billion off the company's value after it incorrectly answered a question in a promotional video.

The company’s new AI chatbot Bard was being shown off on Twitter with a description of how the new feature works and a short demo GIF.

The tweet read: “Bard is an experimental conversational AI service, powered by LaMDA. Built using our large language models and drawing on information from the web, it’s a launchpad for curiosity and can help simplify complex topics.”

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The GIF included showed someone asking Bard: “What new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope can I tell my 9-year-old about?”

Bard offered up multiple responses, however, it was quickly spotted that one of them was factually incorrect.

The final answer read: “JWSR took the very pictures of a planet outside of our own solar system. These distant worlds are called ‘exoplanets’. Exo means ‘from outside’.”

It wasn’t long before Twitter users pointed out that, in fact, the first image taken of a planet outside of our own solar system was taken in 2004 by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope.

Following the error, Google’s parent company Alphabet saw its share prices drop approximately 8 per cent as it lost around $100 billion in market value. It comes as Google attempts to contest with rival company Microsoft, whose search engine Bing has already integrated ChatGPT functions on its public service.

A Google spokesperson said: “This highlights the importance of a rigorous testing process, something that we're kicking off this week with our Trusted Tester program.”

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