AI war begins: Google employees say BardAI launch was 'rushed' and 'botched'

Google recently launched its latest AI chatbot, LaMDA, to the Google search engine, in response to OpenAI's ChatGPT. The Google chatbot is called the "Bard".

But many seem to find issue with the latest release and have called its launch, "rushed", "botched" and "comically short-sighted".

According to CNBC, employees filled the company's internal forum, Memegen, with memes on the announcement.


Some were direct criticisms leveled at CEO Sundar Pichai, calling the launch and layoffs "myopic" and implored him to take "a long-term outlook".

The critics might be right after BardAI made a factual error in a recently shared promotional video. Alphabet Inc's shares also fell nearly 9 percent after the incident with the video. The promotional video saw Google parent Alphabet Inc's market value plunge by more than $100 billion.


The video in question offered an incorrect response to discoveries made from the James Webb Space Telescope, and falsely attributed the first pictures of a planet outside Earth's solar system to the James Webb Space Telescope.

Many Google employees were quick to also point out that the recent layoffs had driven the stock up by nearly 3 percent but following the Bard AI promotional video, it slumped down nearly 9 percent.

Google is fast-tracking AI technologies into Search as Microsoft's ChatGPT integration with Bing and the Edge browser threaten its online dominance.

Other popular memes floating around the forum featured Google's logo in a dumpster fire and there were several upvoted posts, which criticized the management for being "comically short sighted and un-Googley".

Another meme said "rushing Bard to market in a panic validated the market's fear about us".

A former engineer at Google put out a tweet saying the company was not taking the launch seriously. He pointed out that the event was held in Paris, instead of Google headquarters, and the CEO was not present.