Unleash your creativity: A look at Google's Bard

Technology has developed into an intelligent and integral part of our everyday lives. It has thus evolved into many shapes and sizes and suits many of our needs. One of the evolutionary technologies that has seen the light of day is artificial intelligence, and more specifically chatbots’ development.

There are several chatbots out there, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Bing’s Bing Chat, and Google’s Bard. The latter will be today’s focus. AI-driven programs can potentially change the technological landscape of both content creation, storytelling and different kinds of production.

What is Bard?

The newer, and more developed AI programs use the combination of natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) to make content that resembles human production. It’s often within the realm of writing that we see AI being used; it can both be the production of poetry, creative writing and general storytelling.

The AI program is named after the renowned poet and playwright, William Shakespeare, who was known as England’s national poet or “the Bard of Avon” (or just “the Bard”). In the spirit of Shakespeare, Bard is to generate human-like and poetic creativity. Google aims to make a groundbreaking technology with their AI program.

Bard works with the same foundation as ChatGPT and Bing Chat - it has a massive dataset based on text and data from the internet. This includes debates, forums and articles, as well as literature, poetry and all the different types of creative writing there is out there.

Bard analyzes the literature to understand patterns in linguistics and semantics, but also style and context. Bard can then base its knowledge and product on this dataset and produce a coherent and creative text - and this can be almost anything that the user wants it to create. Bard mimics human language and style and even with the same level of creativity and eloquence as human writers would use.

AI in creative writing

Using AI for text production is not a new phenomenon. Many previous AI programs have been developed to produce text based on a set of statistical material and predefined patterns. This, however, has created very bland and uninteresting content, though grammatically correct.

But when we take a closer look at Bard it uses an advanced technology of deep learning that “mimics” the human brain. It has been programmed to do so to understand and capture the many nuances of human language. It works in the same way as previous AI programs with grammatically correct language but it also manages to make creative and captivating content - both imaginatively and creatively.

Bard has thus become an interesting middleground between AI and technology, and human thought and creativity.

Bard's creative capabilities

Poetry and literature

Bard has shown an incredible ability to make poetry and prose that mimic human emotions. Amazingly enough, it can make sonnets, haikus and verses that seem like it was made by a human - often people can’t distinguish between who or what has made the poetry. This has both advantages and disadvantages; it can inspire new and aspiring writers, help creative minds with new styles of writing, but it can - in the worst case scenario - take jobs from humans and replace them (if the technology becomes that advanced).

Storytelling

One of the things that makes Bard even more impressive than its predecessors is its ability to tell engaging and good stories. No matter the length of the literary piece, it can create intricate plotlines and characters. Again, it poses both good and bad opportunities for story writers, as the same circumstances apply here.

Content creation

Beside the impressive production capabilities of creative text, Bard can also generate compelling content with many different purposes. Bard can make articles, copy for many different purposes, and product descriptions - all of these will be produced in a language that is compelling and interesting for readers to engage with. This will evidently change the aspect of content marketing and streamline how content is made for businesses.

Changing the industries

Bard can be used for many things and has thus a great potential. Below we’ll highlight just a few of the many industries that Bard can help us out in:

Entertainment and Media

As we’ve already touched upon, Bard is a great creative writer. So naturally it would be a great help in the entertainment industry where it can generate scripts, plotlines for video games, TV shows and movies. Writers and producers can use Bard to create intricate narratives which will save producers and writers time on the early stages of a production.

Publishing

One of the industries that might face a more negative impact because of Bard is the publishing industry. Bard can, as stated, create intricate and engaging stories which will threaten the writers and authors. Of course authors can utilize Bard for inspiration, but it will evidently be a competitor in the future - if we can’t tell if a good novel is written by a human or AI, human authors will be an endangered field of work.

Education

Bard will also be a great help in the educational sector - it can create new and engaging educational material and assist teachers create interactive lessons and quizzes. Furthermore, Bard can make textbooks specifically to students with special needs, to optimize their learning.

Marketing and Advertising

Another industry that will find a great assistant in Bard is marketing and advertising. Bard can help them create creative and captivating content and advertising. Bard will also be able to make blog posts, SoMe content and reach a target audience - which will enhance and improve brand engagement.

Things to consider with Bard

Bard is an impressive tool for writers and content creators, however it raises essential ethical questions that we should consider.

AI technology will evidently challenge human creativity and capability since it can mimic our way of thinking pretty well. It can thus devalue human creativity and what we produce.

There is, of course, also the concerns about copyright and plagiarism when it comes to AI produced text and copy. Either because several people may use the same prompt or Bard simply gives the (more or less) same piece of text to different users. Furthermore, Bard may also make copy that closely resembles human-made copy and thus lead to copyright lawsuits. The user might be unaware of the copyright and thus be left with a big financial loss due to the AI machine.

It can then be difficult to find a good balance between using AI and making the product yourself. We should support the development of technology, but it should not be at the expense of humans.

We should be cautious with Bard

There is no doubt that Bard presents great opportunities for us, and will make our work easier if we use it correctly. Its impressive ability to create engaging and compelling storytelling can prove to be an advantage to us, but we should be careful not to overuse it - there are some ethical dilemmas we should consider before giving in to the technology.

The creative journey of AI has just begun and Google’s Bard is a great example of advanced technology mimicking human creativity and thought. It’s a tool we should use to let us inspire, assist and change our way of thinking and working.

We are moving towards a time where humans and technology are able to work together to shape and define creative and imaginative production in many different industries as well. It will be interesting to see what the future of AI holds.