Google employees criticise Sundar Pichai over bungled launch of Bard

Googlers say Bard announcement was hurried, badly handled and embarrassing

Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, is facing criticism from the company's employees for the "botched" announcement of its AI-powered chatbot, Bard.

According to CNBC, Google employees took to their internal forum, Memegen, last week to express their dissatisfaction and embarrassment over the announcement, referring to it as "rushed, botched, and un-Googley."

At Google, the term "Googley" refers to an ambitious and diligent employee - the traits that the company encourages in its staff.

On Monday, Pichai revealed some details about Bard chatbot. The announcement came ahead of a Microsoft event in which the Windows maker demonstrated the integration of its ChatGPT technology with the Bing search engine.

On Wednesday, Google held an event in Paris where it revealed more information about Bard, but the presentation was met with disappointment as attendees expected to learn more.

The company's image was further tarnished by another gaffe during a press conference in Paris, when a presenter was unable to do a demonstration due to a misplaced phone.

Unfortunately, Bard also made a factual error in its very first demo, which was noticed by experts.

Google shared a GIF ad on Twitter, in which Bard is prompted to list some new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope. In its answer, Bard states that the telescope was the first to capture images of an exoplanet (a planet outside of our solar system).

However, the fact is that the first photograph of an exoplanet was captured by the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory in 2004. Several astronomers pointed out Bard's wrong answer on Twitter.

Following these incidents, Google's parent company, Alphabet, lost $160 billion in market value.

According to CNBC, Google's internal forum, which is generally light-hearted, took on a serious tone last week, with staff feeling dissatisfied with how the launch of Bard was handled.

"Dear Sundar, the Bard launch and the layoffs were rushed, botched, and myopic," read one meme that included a serious picture of Pichai.

"Please return to taking a long-term outlook."

Another meme read: "Sundar, and leadership, deserve a Perf NI," referring to the lowest category in the company's staff performance assessment system.

"They are being comically short-sighted and un-Googlely in their pursuit of 'sharpening focus'."

One highly rated meme read: "Rushing Bard to market in a panic validated the market's fear about us." The meme included a photo of a bird doing a facepalm.

The Bard announcement and the criticism from employees come amid a race between Microsoft and Google to dominate the AI chatbot market.

In its race to gain advantage over Google in the race, Microsoft is said to be "tentatively" planning an announcement next month to demonstrate how its integration of OpenAI's language AI technology into its Prometheus Model will work in key Microsoft 365 apps like Docs, PowerPoint and Outlook.