Google Bard transitions to PaLM 2 and expands to 180 countries

For the past two months, anybody wanting to try out Google's new chatbot AI, Bard, had to first register their interest and join a waitlist before being granted access. On Wednesday, the company announced that those days are over. Bard will immediately be dropping the waitlist requirement as it expands to 180 additional countries and territories. What's more, this expanded Bard will be built atop Google's newest Large Language Model, PaLM 2, making it more capable than ever before. Google hurriedly released the first generation Bard back in February after OpenAI's ChatGPT came out of nowhere and began eating the industry's collective lunch like Gulliver in a Lilliputian cafeteria. Matters were made worse when Bard's initial performances proved less than impressive -- especially given Google's generally accepted status at the forefront of AI development -- which hurt both Google's public image and its bottom line.