Google is doing some damage control after a new report claimed a former Google employee stated that its new chatbot Bard was using data from a rival service, ChatGPT.
Bard, which launched its public test last week, is also a rival to Microsoft"s Bing Chat, which has a license to use OpenAI"s ChatGPT technology. However, according to a report from The Information, former Google AI researcher Jacob Devlin recently departed the company, but not before he allegedly warned Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai that Bard was taking data from ChatGPT in an indirect way.
Specifically, Devlin stated that the Bard dev team accessed a website called ShareGPT, where ChatGPT conversations from users are then posted for everyone to check out. However, Google spokesperson Chris Pappas quickly sent a statement to The Verge, which says flat out, "Bard is not trained on any data from ShareGPT or ChatGPT."
The Information also claims, via unnamed sources, that Google"s Brain AI team is joining forces with DeepMind, another AI company that"s under Alphabet. The two groups are reportedly working together on a new project with the code name Gemini. The project"s goal is to come up with a product to compete with OpenAI"s efforts. The report would seem to suggest that Google wants a chatbot that will be waiting in the wings should the company"s efforts with Bard fall short.
Source: The Information via The Verge