In a leaked e-mail, Google CEO Sundar Pichai tells employees to spend 2-4 hours to test AI tool Bard

After the recent goof-up involving the artificial intelligence chatbot Bard, which led to Alphabet's share price falling more than seven per cent, and in the wake of allegations that the rollout of Bard was "rushed" to counter Microsoft's Bing chatbot, Google CEO Sundar Pichai urged the employees to spend a few hours to test its AI tool.

In an internal mail to the company's employees, which has now been leaked, Pichai asked the company's employees to spend two to four hours of their time on the AI chat tool. The employees are expected to get detailed instructions in this regard next week.

“I know this moment is uncomfortably exciting, and that’s to be expected: the underlying technology is evolving rapidly with so much potential,” the mail from the CEO read.

While Microsoft's chatbot has the first-mover advantage and is reportedly gaining popularity, because of the Bard goof-up—the AI chatbot had given an inaccurate answer to a question—Google had lost $100 billion in market value. However, Pichai sought to clarify in his mail that the inability to launch a product before its competition never affected Google's ability to win. “Some of our most successful products were not first to market. “They gained momentum because they solved important user needs and were built on deep technical insights," he wrote.

He may have been referring to Google cornering most of the search engine market despite not being the first mover. In the 2000s, there were a few popular search engines in the market, which have now been relegated to obscurity.

“The most important thing we can do right now is to focus on building a great product and developing it responsibly,” the Google CEO said.

Observing that thousands of people, both Googlers and others, are testing Bar's responses for quality, safety, and groundedness in real-world information, Pichai wrote: “AI has gone through many winters and springs. And now it is blooming again."

He appealed to Googlers to channel their energy and excitement into the company's products and "Pressure test Bard and make the product better.”