Google's Bard AI Chatbot now has image generating features, catching up with ChatGPT Plus

Google has upgraded its Bard chatbot, adding image generation features via its Imagen 2 text-to-image model. While the original version of Bard was launched with the purpose of competing with ChatGPT Plus from OpenAI, the latter had a significant edge in features, owing to its integration with DALL-E 3, which permitted the generation of images from text prompts. Now that Bard is powered by Imagen 2 via the Gemini Pro model, it has closed the gap with ChatGPT Plus, although the more powerful Gemini Ultra model is still in development.

Google has emphasized that Bard's image generation features were designed with responsibility in mind, indicating that the company has implemented safeguards to prevent the generation of images that could be deemed offensive, such as images of well-known people or sexually explicit content. As such, the new Bard is introducing watermarking into the pixel data of the generated images, indicating their AI origins, and Google has also limited the types of images that can be generated via text prompts.

Aside from Bard, Google has also released a new experimental image generation tool called ImageFX, which is powered by Imagen 2. ImageFX is designed to allow users to create images with simple text prompts, and, like Bard, the images will be watermarked to indicate their artificial origins. This tool joins Google's other AI creation tools, MusicFX and TextFX, which were launched last year, and is available to test on Google Labs.

Bard's new image generation features are currently only available in English, but the chatbot has expanded to over 40 languages in more than 230 countries, a significant increase from its previous availability of English in 170 countries. Additionally, the double-check feature, which uses the internet to assess and support or contradict responses from Bard, has been expanded to 40 languages.

This upgrade demonstrates Google's commitment to improving Bard's capabilities and expanding its reach, making it a more competitive offering compared to ChatGPT Plus.