Google opens Bard sign-ups in the US and UK

Google opened sign-ups for Bard on March 21, beginning a staged rollout in the US and UK.

Photo: Anthony Quintano, “Google at the 2012 Democratic National Convention North Carolina”. Taken 6 September 2012. CC BY 2.0. Resized and cropped. Historical Google display; no endorsement implied.

The experimental chatbot uses a lightweight, optimized version of LaMDA. Google pitches it as a tool for brainstorming, explaining concepts and drafting outlines. Users can choose between response drafts, ask follow-up questions or open Search to check an answer. The company warns that responses can be wrong.

Google plans to expand access to more countries and add languages, coding and multimodal capabilities later. It’ll use feedback from this rollout to improve the experiment.