I’m struggling to find the link because of all the new coverage, but Bard was mentioned as a Google project in 2019. It had a prefix in the name though, which I'm struggling to remember (it wasn't OpenBard, but it was SomethingBard).
If that is real (and hopefully I can find it and update this post)… that would indicate Google has been working on it for years, never thought it was ready, and then decided to snap-deploy it after ChatGPT’s success. Which, predictably, would make a massive mess internally as reported here. I find it believable.
UPDATE: OK, it was called "Apprentice Bard." However, that names comes from CNBC in 2023, but CNBC doesn't say when "Apprentice Bard" actually began development. However, "Apprentice Bard" was a replacement for Google's first internal chatbot solution Meena, which Google did deploy internally and also publicly revealed only for bragging rights (and not actual use) in January 2020 (and so the 2019 figure in my head does somewhat line up). So if you think about the Bard project as having started with Meena... sounds about right. https://ai.googleblog.com/2020/01/towards-conversational-age...
If that is real (and hopefully I can find it and update this post)… that would indicate Google has been working on it for years, never thought it was ready, and then decided to snap-deploy it after ChatGPT’s success. Which, predictably, would make a massive mess internally as reported here. I find it believable.
UPDATE: OK, it was called "Apprentice Bard." However, that names comes from CNBC in 2023, but CNBC doesn't say when "Apprentice Bard" actually began development. However, "Apprentice Bard" was a replacement for Google's first internal chatbot solution Meena, which Google did deploy internally and also publicly revealed only for bragging rights (and not actual use) in January 2020 (and so the 2019 figure in my head does somewhat line up). So if you think about the Bard project as having started with Meena... sounds about right. https://ai.googleblog.com/2020/01/towards-conversational-age...