The Stack: Google Launches ‘Bard’ ChatBot; CMA Advances Towards Blocking Microsoft-Activision Deal

This week: Google ventures into generative AI by launching its 'Bard' chatbot, the CMA steps closer to blocking Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard...

Google dominated the headlines this week with its entry into the race for generative AI. A mere day after news broke that the company had invested in Open-AI rival Anthropic, Google launched its own chatbot, 'Bard', "to combine the breadth of the world's knowledge with the power, intelligence, and creativity of our large language models," according to chief executive Sundar Pichai. Pichai's words came back to bite him when Bard delivered a factual error in an ad demo, costing Google USD$100bn (~£82.4bn) in market value. Whoops.

In the UK, the Competition & Markets Authority (CMA) provisionally ruled against Microsoft's purchase of Activision Blizzard, prompting the tech giant to retort that, "75% of respondents to the CMA‘s public consultation agree that this deal is good for competition in UK gaming". Elsewhere, French ad tech firm Criteo renewed efforts to sell after previous attempts to source a new owner proved fruitless.

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