Alphabet saw a $100 billion decline in market value on Wednesday as a result of its new chatbot Brad providing false information in a promotional video, fueling concerns that the parent company is falling behind rival Microsoft.
During regular trading, Alphabet shares fell as much as 9%, with volumes nearly tripling the 50-day moving average. After hours, they reduced their losses and were roughly flat. With Wednesday’s losses excluded, the stock has gained 15% since the start of this year after losing 40% of its value last year.
Google’s advertising promoting the chatbot Bard, which made its debut on Monday, contained a factual error concerning which satellite captured the first images of a planet outside our solar system. Reuters first discovered this error.
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Google has been on its heels after OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT in November, which amazed users and became viral in Silicon Valley circles for its accurate and well-written responses to straightforward questions.
During its live-streamed presentation on Wednesday morning, Google did not specify how and when it would integrate Bard into its primary search function. Bard’s error was discovered just hours before the presentation by Google. Since the video was already out, there was no means to mitigate the consequences.
The previous day, Microsoft announced at an event that a ChatGPT-integrated version of the Bing search engine had already been made available to the public.
