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.

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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

Visa’s Return To Syria Starts With A Test And A Bank In Lebanon

Foreign visitors will be the first users to benefit, but whether Syria’s own banks and cardholders follow is still an open question.

Published

2 weeks ago

August 27, 2026

Dana Saadeh

visa's return to syria starts with a test and a bank in lebanon

Visa is returning to Syria. Its first live international card transaction in the country was a test rather than a launch, and the milestone event ran through a Lebanese bank.

The acquirer (the bank on the merchant’s side of a card payment) was Fransabank Lebanon, with Paymera as the other named partner. Nadim Moujaes, who heads a Fransabank Group subsidiary, describes the test as both the culmination of “longstanding efforts to link Syria back to international payment networks” and “the first step in a larger path”.

Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa makes the first electronic payment in Syria using a @Visa card at a store in Damascus, following the lifting of US sanctions on Syria. pic.twitter.com/lpAN7nQ6Fc

— Tech Magazine (@TechMGZN) August 27, 2026

“We are excited to have successfully tested live transactions today as we plan to enable international visitors to use their Visa cards while in Syria,” says Leila Serhan, Visa’s senior vice president and group country manager for the North Africa, Levant and Pakistan region. Although a significant first step, that plan doesn’t come with a hard date for when a visitor’s card will work normally.

Mohammed Safwat Raslan, governor of the Central Bank of Syria, says the test paves the way for international card acceptance in Syria and that maintaining strong compliance, risk management and operational controls will remain essential. Serhan likewise stresses that Visa has worked within applicable legal, regulatory and compliance requirements. For a test transaction, it seems there was a great deal of attention paid to the rules, with the entire operation being carefully managed.

Also Read: Lebanon’s 5G Era Begins With 150 Stations And A $1M Budget

The test is the latest step in a sequence that began in December 2025, when Visa announced a strategic roadmap to support Syria’s integration into the global digital economy. In February 2026 it hosted its first industry gathering of banks, ecosystem partners and policymakers in Damascus and, the same month, signed an agreement with Syria’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology in San Francisco.

Michel Kattouah, Paymera’s CEO, called the test “the return of international card acceptance,” but while that’s positive news, there’s no word yet on when a Syrian bank will issue a Visa card to a Syrian customer.