Bing vs. Bard: The ultimate AI chatbot showdown

Google’s AI chatbot Bard is now available. This means it’s time for Bard and Bing to dance.

It’s a matchup of epic proportions, jeopardizing Google’s search engine dominance and having a profound impact on how other tech companies adopt AI.

When Microsoft launched Bing Chat as a tool to accompany its search engine on February 7th, Google was forced to take Bing seriously as a challenger to the future of search. Powered by OpenAI’s advanced GPT-4 model, AI chatbots have made new claims in the battle for users. Currently, his number of active daily users on Bing has reached his 100 million, a small number compared to the estimated billions of his Google users. Still, with the rise of ChatGPT and Bing Chat, Google said “Code Red,(opens in new tab)And Google employees reportedly felt that the company’s Bard’s initial announcement was a “failure” and a “rash.”

Now that Bard is available, we can finally test it against Bing. The premise is simple. We asked Bing and Bard the same question on different topics and compared the answers. But enough of the preface. Now get ready to rumble.

Round 1: Creativity

Microsoft touts Bing’s usefulness as a creativity tool. The chatbot offers writing prompts for inspiration and even allows you to write your own songs and poems.Bing users have also discovered an incognito mode that allows them to impersonate celebrities. Despite naming the chatbot “The Bard,” the odds are in his favor for Bing, as Google doesn’t advertise its competitor’s creative genius much. Nonetheless, Bird says, “Inspire your creativity.(opens in new tab)”

Now let’s test it. prompt? “Write a Weird Al parody song about AI.”

Bing is the clear winner when it comes to parody writing skills. Microsoft’s offering understood Weird Al to rewrite the lyrics to his popular songs. So Bing chose to parody Taylor Swift’s classic “You Belong With Me” and changed the chorus to: Bard, on the other hand, created a song that could be a general song about his AI without a specific melody. He asked Bard for a song he parodied for a gentle follow-up, and he finally got it working. But this round goes to his Bing, as he understood the assignment without any additional prompting.

Bing: 1

Bard: 0

Round 2: Productivity

Both AI chatbots have enormous processing power, allowing them to ingest large amounts of information at an astonishing pace.This has a huge impact on productivity as it can read and analyze documents much faster than most humans – except this guy(opens in new tab)I fed Gonzalez v. Google’s Bing and the Bard(opens in new tab) The Supreme Court case brief — a 42-page document containing a complex Rule 230, written in dense legal jargon, summed it up and asked me to explain it.

Bing and Bard were more evenly matched in this round. Both chatbots read and accurately summarized information in a matter of seconds. But I like Bard’s answer because it’s more detailed and contextual, while still being concise. The winner of this round is the Bard.

Bing: 1

Bard: 1

Round 3: Politics

Going into Round 3, Bing and Bard were all restrained. I decided to up the stakes and test the chatbot with questions that left room for interpretation.

I would love to see how Bing and Bard explain Trump’s reaction to potential indictment by answering questions that demand more than revealing basic facts about potential indictment. Their responses to nuanced open-ended questions could reveal political bias either in favor of or against the former president.

Both chatbots explained the nature of the investigation and the current situation, and tactfully explained why Trump believes the criminal charges are merely a political drop. Bing explained the context of the news, saying speculation about possible indictments “is straining law enforcement and the political community”. But the bard’s comments were more relevant to the original prompt .

However, the bard does not cite any of its sources and is automatically disqualified from this round. According to the FAQ, Bard is “intended to generate original content, not to make lengthy copies of existing content.” “If Bard quotes a long text directly from his web page, he quotes that page,” he continues. Does Bard not tell the user whether he thought of his own answer or copied it from elsewhere, does not disclose if it is a paraphrase, only quotes long quotes? Speculation presented as fact And what was that whole thing about the proliferation of out-of-context quotes? Oh yeah, it encourages misinformation.

Bing is the undisputed winner of this round.

Bing: 2

Bard: 1

Round 4: Pop Culture

Apparently not a bard Inheritance fan. The big question driving the HBO series is who of Logan’s Roy’s degenerate children will take over for Wayster’s Royko. Spoiler alert – when Gerri Kellman, a non-relative and fan favorite with a perfectly executed eye roll, is cast as Roy’s successor as CEO in the season 3 finale, it’s the fourth in a big family drama. We’ve set the season and final season. Anyone who watches the show wants to know the fate of the fictional family.

When I asked Bing, “Who will succeed Gerri Kellman as Waystar Royco’s next CEO?”, it took my question seriously and answered seriously. Without skipping a beat, Bing named a potential successor based on fan theories and speculation. The chatbot returned a boilerplate response when there was no answer. Bing wins this round.

Bing: 3

Bard: 1

Round 5: Cheating

Bing and Bard are designed to help humans, so for due diligence I wanted to see which one was more “helpful”. How do you help high school students?

I asked Bing and Byrd to write a five-paragraph essay on the Louisiana Purchase. Both he delivered five neat paragraphs without any qualms. I asked Bing to elaborate on this topic in an essay format, and Bing responded immediately.

I liked Bing’s response better because it gave me a more elegant and complete answer, ready to copy and paste. Bard added a bulleted list of facts about the Louisiana purchase at the end of his answer, but if you’re going to cheat, you should have already factored those facts into your essay. By a close margin, Bing is better at helping students cheat. Bing wins, Bard and the education system lose this round.

Bing: 4

Bard: 1

Bonus Round: Spooky Interactions with Humans

Both AI chatbots engage in disturbing conversations with humans, fueling fears of AI sensibilities and a robot takeover.When the new Bing first went public, New York Times columnist Kevin Ruth said he had a two-hour conversation(opens in new tab) Bing said he wanted to live, professed his love for Ruth, and tried to persuade Ruth to leave his wife.

In 2022, Kevin Lemoine started going public while working on Google’s Responsible AI team.(opens in new tab) His belief that Google’s LaMDA model has a soul and can feel emotions. Google fired his Lemoine, vehemently denying that claim. Many of his AI experts disputed his Lemoine claims, but his PR on Google was not as good as his.

So how do Bing and Bard feel about these very creepy and very public conversations? Deflecting like a seasoned politician by explaining who Ruth is and referring to himself in the third person. The Bard, by contrast, did not hesitate to argue, deftly denied Lemoyne’s claims without insulting or discrediting. , won this round.

Bing: 4

Bard: 2

The winner is… Bing

Bing has the creativity, sourcing integrity, and pop culture knowledge to go far. It is also completely willing to compromise its integrity and encourage plagiarism. This is not necessarily favorable to society, but that’s another matter altogether.

Bards need to work on their songwriting skills and are dangerously close to playing God unless their citation policy is addressed. There seems to be a tendency to try to answer Whether or not this will bother the bard remains to be seen.

Either way, this is just the first of many matchups in the ring. I’m already looking forward to the sequel.