Google opens testing of ChatGPT rival, as artificial intelligence war heats up

Google is rolling out a new conversational artificial-intelligence service to a select set of testers, and plans a broader public launch in coming weeks, part of the company’s effort to play catch-up with challengers such as OpenAI, creator of the popular chatbot ChatGPT. 

The new experimental service, called Bard, generates textual responses to questions posed by users, based on information drawn from the web, Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Google parent Alphabet Inc., said in a blog post published Monday. 

In that post, Mr. Pichai also shared a glimpse of new search engine features that will use AI to answer user queries, and said it would open up some of its AI programs to outside developers.