米グーグル、対話型ＡＩの広告で「誤答」　株価が急落

【パリＡＦＰ＝時事】米ＩＴ大手グーグルは８日、人工知能（ＡＩ）を使った自動応答システム（チャットボット）「バード」などＡＩ活用に関する詳細を発表した。しかし、バードのオンライン広告に誤情報が含まれていることが発覚し、株価が急落する事態となった。（写真は米グーグルのロゴ）
　誤情報が見つかったのは、ツイッターに掲載されたバードの広告。広告の中で、ジェームズ・ウェッブ宇宙望遠鏡の成果について９歳の子どもにどのように説明するか質問されたバードは、世界で初めて太陽系外の惑星の撮影に成功したと回答。しかし正しくは、その快挙は欧州の超大型望遠鏡ＶＬＴが達成したものだった。
　これを受けてグーグルの親会社アルファベットの株価は７％以上急落した。
　グーグルは６日にバードを発表。翌７日には米マイクロソフトも同じく対話型ＡＩを使った検索エンジンを公表した。グーグルはマイクロソフトに先んじて自社サービスの詳細を発表しようと急いだとみられているが、グーグルはそうした見方を否定している。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2023/02/09-16:54）

Google on Wednesday announced a slew of features powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI), but a mistake in an ad caused its share price to tank.
The search engine giant is rushing into the space after the bot ChatGPT caught the imagination of web users around the world with its ability to generate essays, speeches and even exam papers in seconds.
Microsoft has announced a multibillion-dollar partnership with ChatGPT maker OpenAI and unveiled new products on Tuesday, while Google tried to steal the march a day earlier by announcing its Bard alternative.
The bots are quickly being integrated into search engines and Google is battling to preserve its two-decade dominance of the web search industry.
But astronomers on Twitter quickly noticed that Google's Bard had given out an error in an ad on Twitter touting its new technology.
In the ad, the bot was asked about what to tell a nine-year-old about discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope.
It incorrectly offered the response that the telescope was the first to take pictures of a planet outside Earth's solar system, when that honor actually belongs to the European Very Large Telescope.
The mess-up sent the share price spiraling down by more than seven percent on Wednesday with investors also underwhelmed by the latest announcements.
Before the problem emerged, Google Vice President Prabhakar Raghavan told an event in Paris that Bard was now being used by trusted testers but did not give a timeline for a public release, which is expected within weeks.
Analysts have suggested Google rushed its announcement under pressure from Microsoft, but Raghavan denied the claim.
This has been a multiyear journey, he said, adding that no single event had dramatically changed the course of Google's plans.
Google executives announced on Wednesday several AI-induced improvements across products including maps, translation and its image recognition tool Lens.
Microsoft has similarly said it will incorporate AI into its Office suite and Teams messaging app.
But its promise to soup up its much-maligned Bing search engine put it on a collision course with Google, which has dominated the field for two decades.
AI chatbots like ChatGPT hold the promise of supplying users with ready-made answers from multiple sources, replacing the familiar list of links and ads that have been Google's bread and butter for two decades.
Media reports said the overnight success of ChatGPT was designated a code red threat at Google with founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page -- who left several years ago -- brought back to brainstorm ideas and fast-track a response.
The pressure to act was heightened last week when Google parent Alphabet posted disappointing results and announced it was laying off 12,000 employees.