GOOGLE has launched a hyper-intelligent chatbot called Bard.

The AI app is a rival to wildly popular app ChatGPT – and promises to serve up "the breadth of the world's knowledge".

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It was unveiled today by Google chief Sundar Pichai, who described AI as "the most profound technology we are working on today".

And he said Bard was part of a new AI push that could improve billions of lives.

It's designed so that users can ask questions or have conversations – like an extremely intelligent search engine.

"Bard seeks to combine the breadth of the world’s knowledge with the power, intelligence and creativity of our large language models," Pichai explained.

"It draws on information from the web to provide fresh, high-quality responses.

"Bard can be an outlet for creativity, and a launchpad for curiosity, helping you to explain new discoveries from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to a 9-year-old, or learn more about the best strikers in football right now, and then get drills to build your skills."

Google says that the app is an experimental conversational AI.

It's powered LaMDA, which stands for Language Model for Dialogue Applications.

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That's Google's AI model that can let an app have natural conversations with a human.

Google said that it's opening the app up to "trusted testers".

But it added that the Bard app would be more widely available to the public in the coming weeks.

Bard is built on a "lightweight" version of LaMDA.

"This much smaller model requires significantly less computing power, enabling us to scale to more users, allowing for more feedback," Pichai explained.

"We’ll combine external feedback with our own internal testing to make sure Bard’s responses meet a high bar for quality, safety and groundedness in real-world information.

"We’re excited for this phase of testing to help us continue to learn and improve Bard’s quality and speed."

Google says it will work to introduce some of this technology into its search features.

So when you do a Google Search, you may see some content that has been generated by an AI.

Google says these features "will begin rolling out soon".

Chatty apps

The new Bard app is a clear rival to Open AI's ChatGPT.

ChatGPT is effectively an artificial intelligence system that can create human-like text.

You can feed it a prompt, and it will create a chunk of text that continues on.

And if it works correctly, it will read in natural language as though it was written by a human.

A GPT "model" can create AI-generated content – so envision a future where robots are writing more of what you see online.

That's exactly what ChatGPT does.

And it can even hold conversations, learning from things that you've said.

You could type something simple like: "What's the best way to cook a potato?"

If you don't like the reply it gives, you could write: "No, give me a better recipe."

A prompt can even be more complicated like: "Create a personal training plan for me, based on five days at the gym per week, incorporating weightlifting and cardio, that takes about 45 minutes."

In some ways, it's like a search engine – but potentially much more powerful.

However, you should be warned that it's entirely possible ChatGPT will give you false or misleading information.

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And Google's Bard may suffer similar problems.

Experts think that eventually AI apps will be able to replace some jobs.