Brandon Wade/Reuters
- Google unveiled its ChatGPT competitor, Bard, in a brief presentation earlier this week.
- The brevity of the presentation and the fact that Bard gave at least one incorrect answer led to criticism of the event.
- Internally, Google employees are making jokes about the event and CEO Sundar Pichai, according to CNBC.
Google employees are reportedly mocking their own company and its CEO following the announcement of Bard, the tech giant's forthcoming artificial intelligence chatbot and ChatGPT competitor.
Employees are allegedly using Google's internal meme generator, commonly referred to as MemeGen, to make jokes at the expense of CEO Sundar Pichai and to criticize the preview event as "rushed" and "botched," according to a report from CNBC.
"Dear Sundar, the Bard launch and the layoffs were rushed, botched, and myopic," one popular meme that included a picture of Pichai read, according to CNBC. "Please return to taking a long-term outlook."
Another meme viewed by CNBC poked fun at how layoffs announced last month led to a brief bump in the company's stock price by 3%, but the Bard presentation that showed the chatbot give at least one incorrect answer dropped the stock by at least 9% this week.
"This highlights the importance of a rigorous testing process, something that we're kicking off this week with our Trusted Tester program," a Google spokesperson told Insider earlier this week regarding the error. "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."
Other popular memes that emerged this week included Google's G logo in a dumpster fire, as well as posts accusing Pichai and other senior management of being "comically short sighted and un-Googley," according to CNBC.
Google has taken several punches as of late, including issuing a "code red" following ChatGPT's explosive debut in November. The tech giant was further shaken when Microsoft's Bing recently announced upgrades using OpenAI and ChatGPT technology, the latest threat to pile up against the long-dominant search engine.
At least one former engineer has taken to Twitter since the Bard event to claim his former employer isn't taking the prospects of AI seriously, as they announced it alongside other products at an event that wasn't even held on the main Google campus.
Earlier this week, Insider senior tech correspondent Adam Rogers wrote about the potential pitfalls of integrating AI chatbots into search engines, especially when those bots will be forced to answer complex questions that often produce incorrect or misleading answers.
Google did not immediately return Insider's request for comment about the internal response to Bard.