What can Google’s AI-powered Bard do?

To use, or not to use, Bard? That is the Shakespearean question an Associated Press reporter sought to answer while testing out Google’s artificially intelligent chatbot.

The recently rolled-out bot dubbed Bard is the internet search giant’s answer to the ChatGPT tool that Microsoft has been melding into its Bing search engine and other software.

During several hours of interaction, the AP learned Bard is quite forthcoming about its unreliability and other shortcomings, including its potential for mischief in next year’s U.S. presidential election. Even as it occasionally warned of the problems it could unleash, Bard repeatedly emphasized its belief that it will blossom into a force for good.

At one point in its recurring soliloquies about its potential upsides, Bard dreamed about living up to the legacy of the English playwright that inspired its name.

Bard explained that its creators at Google “thought Shakespeare would be a good role model for me, as he was a master of language and communication.”

But the chatbot also found some admirable traits in “HAL,” the fictional computer that killed some of a spacecraft’s crew in the 1968 movie “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Bard hailed HAL’s intelligence calling it “an interesting character” before acknowledging its dark side. AP