News

Introducing Bard, Google’s Response To ChatGPT

The search giant’s new chatbot is still being tested, but is set to launch in the coming weeks with an API available for developers to build into their own creations.

Published

4 years ago

February 8, 2023

Nour Nasir

introducing bard google's response to chatgpt

As the hype builds around startup OpenAI’s chatbot, ChatGPT, Google is keen to stay ahead of the Microsoft-funded competition. To that end, the search giant will roll out its own version of the technology named Bard over the coming weeks.

Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, has announced that Bard is already available to “trusted testers” and is designed to harness the “breadth of the world’s knowledge” behind a conversational-looking interface. Pichai did not announce concrete plans to integrate Bard into the company’s main search box, instead pointing to a novel and more cautious use of the technology to enhance conventional searches.

The news of Google’s foray into chatbot-style AI comes after Microsoft’s recent investment of $10 billion into ChatGPT’s parent company, OpenAI. ChatGPT has grown into an internet sensation over the last few months, however, some experts advise caution after noticing that the bot is prone to making up answers or copying its responses from other online sources.

Also Read: Best Music Streaming Services In The Middle East

Interestingly, the ChatGPT engine is built on top of an AI model known as Transformer, which Google itself first invented. After Google researchers listed severe limitations in the concept in a 2020 paper, two prominent ethical AI researchers, Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell, were fired from the search giant, while others are said to remain frustrated at Google’s hesitancy to harness the technology thoroughly.

So what differences can we expect from Google’s new Bard software when it releases? In Sundar Pichai’s blog post on Monday, the CEO offered the example of asking Bard “to explain discoveries made by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in a way that a 9-year-old might find interesting”. Bard responds in a conversational bullet-point style, with the first one reading, “In 2023, The JWST spotted several galaxies nicknamed green peas. They were given this name because they are small, round, and green, like peas”.

News

Microsoft Plans $10 Billion-Plus Gulf Expansion Despite Iran Conflict

Security is shaping Microsoft’s approach, from resilience work with governments to what it will say about how the money splits by country.

Published

4 days ago

September 24, 2026

Nour Nasir

Microsoft

Microsoft is planning more than $10 billion of investment across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait through 2030, Vice Chair and President Brad Smith told Reuters, calling the spending schedule aggressive. The Iranian conflict that began on February 28 has not persuaded the company to scale back.

“We’re sustaining all the investments we planned to make before this conflict started, and we are in fact adding to them,” Smith said. The $10 billion-plus total does not, however, show how large those additions are.

The investment, which Smith described as part of Microsoft’s continued infrastructure expansion, is aimed at cloud and AI infrastructure and at the company’s growing regional operations. Microsoft also intends to put more than $400 million into subsea and terrestrial connectivity across the Middle East by 2030.

The spending fits the region’s own ambitions too. Gulf governments have been investing heavily in AI infrastructure as part of a push to diversify their economies beyond oil and gas and turn themselves into global technology hubs. Major cloud and AI providers have been drawn in part by the land and relatively low-cost energy on offer.

Microsoft is widening its partnerships with regional AI companies, though not on identical terms. In 2024, it invested $1.5 billion in Abu Dhabi-based G42 for a minority stake, and Smith currently sits on G42’s board. Saudi Arabia’s Humain and Qatar’s Qai are working with Microsoft on selected priority areas, but Smith said the company does not plan to make capital investments in either.

Also Read: Egypt’s Mobile Wallets Are Booming, But Cash Still Has Power

The conflict has added another strand to Microsoft’s work in the region. Since it began, Smith said, the company has supported regional partners with digital resilience assessments, and it is now working with Gulf countries through a digital resilience initiative focused on preparedness and the protection of critical data.

So far, the company has given no country-by-country breakdown of the investment, citing security among other factors. So while the headline figure is public, how Microsoft divides the spending among the four countries is not.