Google to launch Bard chatbot for feedback as it steps up AI competition
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Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) CEO Sundar Pichai said on Monday the tech giant would unveil its Bard chatbot for feedback, with a wider public release coming in short order as it steps up its general artificial intelligence offerings. 
In a blog post, Pichai said the Bard chatbot would be powered by Language Model for Dialogue Applications, or LaMDA, Google's (GOOG) (GOOGL) artificial intelligence.
"Bard seeks to combine the breadth of the worldâs knowledge with the power, intelligence and creativity of our large language models," Pichai wrote in the blog post, adding that it "draws on information from the web to provide fresh, high-quality responses." 
LaMDA gained notoriety last year when a former Google (GOOG) (GOOGL) engineer claimed it was sentient. The engineer was later fired after his statements and the claim was widely dismissed by the company and third-party scientists.
The unveiling of Bard by Google (GOOG) (GOOGL) comes as Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) announced last month that it was making a "multiyear, multibillion" dollar investment in ChatGPT maker, OpenAI.
Microsoft (MSFT) has already started to integrate ChatGPT into its products, including its Azure cloud service.
Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft (MSFT) may also integrate ChatGPT into its Bing search engine in short order, as it looks to grab search engine market share away from Google (GOOG) (GOOGL).
Google (GOOG) (GOOGL) shares fell 1.5% in mid-day trading on Monday.
Google (GOOG) (GOOGL) is slated to host an artificial intelligence-focused event later this week about "using the power of AI."