‘Un-Googley’: Sundar Pichai criticised for ‘rushed’, ‘botched’ announcement of Bard

According to a report, Google employees have taken to Memegen, Google's popular internal forum, to lambast the CEO.

Published on: Feb 13, 2023, 10:37:01 IST

By HT News Desk, New Delhi

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Google CEO Sundar Pichai is reportedly facing internal criticism over how the company introduced Bard, an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot that was announced by Pichai himself on Feb 7, and is seen as a direct competitor to OpenAI's ChatGPT.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai (Reuters file photo)

Also Read | Meet ‘Bard’, Google's ChatGPT-like conversational AI chatbot

According to CNBC, which published the said report, Google employees have taken to Memegen, the tech giant's popular internal forum, to lambast the CEO, and described Bard's introduction as ‘rushed,' ‘botched,’ and even ‘un-Googley.’

“Dear Sundar, the Bard launch and the layoffs were rushed, botched and myopic. Please return to taking a long-term outlook,” read a message, and received many updates from the employees.

Another message said Pichai and the leadership deserve a ‘PerfNI,’ referring to the lowest category in the company's performance review system. “In their pursuit of sharpening focus, they are being comically short-sighted and un-Googley,” it added.

What happened at Bard announcement?

On Monday last week, Pichai introduced Bard to the world, doing so a day before rival Microsoft announced it will integrate the powerful capabilities of language-based AI in its Bing search engine.

Also Read | Google warns against 'hallucinating' AI chatbots: Report

On Wednesday, during Bard's formal unveiling, search boss Prabhakar Raghavan shared some slides explaining the chatbot's capabilities. Those tuning in, however, expected to hear more. Also, many staffers did not even know such an event was taking place. One presenter, said CNBC, forgot to bring a phone that was required during the demo.

This was in addition to an online promotional video published by Google, in which, as it turned out, the software tool delivered an incorrect answer.

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