RIYADH and DUBAI: Google launched its latest generative artificial intelligence experiment, Bard in Arabic, on Thursday, having initially introduced it in English in May this year, to allow Arabic-speaking people to utilize their creative capabilities and increase productivity.

Google is intentionally calling Bard an 鈥淎I experiment鈥� 鈥� not a chatbot 鈥� allowing the company to explore a 鈥渘ew paradigm in computing,鈥� said Najeeb Jarrar, regional director of marketing at Google MENA.

鈥淲e鈥檙e learning together how large language models can be helpful and how to minimize poor experiences,鈥� he told Arab News.

The Arabic language consists of several dialects, making it a challenge for AI models. Bard, however, is based on Google鈥檚 most recent language model, PaLM2, which can understand information in multiple languages.

It is designed to recognize questions in over 16 Arabic dialects, including Egyptian Spoken Arabic and 抖阴短视频n Spoken Arabic, and can reply to questions in Modern Standard Arabic, Jarrar said.

It also understands input even if it contains mixed languages such as inserting sentences in Arabic with other languages, along with a user interface that supports right-to-left writing. 

鈥淚 have been using Bard since its release in the Middle East, in the English language. My use for it was to summarize some videos and reports,鈥� said Osamah Essam Eddin, a technical content creator.

He explained how he used both Bard and ChatGPT and compared the two. 鈥淚 use Bard more for search or (to) lookup updates about a piece of information. It is excellent for anything related to searching such as searching for a specific brand, specific feature, and such,鈥� he said.

Currently, Bard is only available for personal use. When asked about how businesses can use Bard, Jarrar said: 鈥淎s we launch Bard in new languages including Arabic, our focus will primarily focus on users鈥� experience and how they can benefit more from Bard.鈥�

There is also no news regarding advertising and revenue models for Bard.

It is primarily designed to boost productivity through features like exporting Python code to Replit; sharing Bard chats with friends; and image search.

Google has already integrated products like Lens, Gmail, Docs and Collab into Bard with plans for 鈥渇urther integration,鈥� Jarrar said.

鈥淲e are used to thinking of computing (as) narrowing the world鈥檚 existing information, and now it鈥檚 about applying the information and expanding it into new ways of creation and creativity,鈥� said Jack Krawczyk, senior product director at Google and one of the leads at Bard, during a roundtable earlier this week.

Addressing privacy and misinformation concerns associated with AI, particularly generative AI chatbots, he said that Google is taking a 鈥渂old and responsible approach,鈥� which means engaging with privacy regulators before launching.

Image search, for example, is currently only available in English because Google wants to 鈥渦nderstand how this new form of creativity operates in a single language鈥� so that it can build systems that essentially 鈥渕aximize helpfulness and minimize harm鈥� in other languages, Krawczyk said.

鈥淎 lot of people talk about the race that鈥檚 happening right now in AI and we believe there鈥檚 only one race 鈥� the race to get it right. And in that race to get it right, we鈥檙e taking this responsible approach,鈥� he added.

Arabic was among over 40 languages Bard was launched in and rolled out across Europe on Thursday.