Bard is a descendant of an earlier language model of Google's called Lamda, which was never fully released to the public.
Google senior product director Jack Krawczyk has told the BBC that Bard is "an experiment" and he hopes people will use it as a "launchpad for creativity".
While ChatGPT's knowledge database only extends as far as the year 2021 - it cannot, for example, answer questions about the recent earthquake in Turkey and Syria - Bard can access current information.
