(Ottawa) Bard, Google’s chatbot, expanded its international presence on Thursday, but is shying away from Canada for now. It is because its creator believes that the climate of uncertainty does not lend itself to it in the context of the adoption of the Online News Act.
The artificial intelligence (AI)-powered robot is now accessible in more than 230 countries and territories around the world, and in about 40 languages, the company said in a blog post on Thursday. He landed neither in China nor in Russia nor in Iran… nor in Canada.
The move is not unrelated to the ongoing regulatory process, a Google spokesperson for the company agreed in a statement.
“We are committed to being good partners as we navigate regulatory uncertainties in Canada, and we are excited to soon bring the potential of Bard’s Generative AI to Canadians,” it reported.
The web giant is at war with the Liberal government, which it considers the Online News Act “unenforceable”. So when it comes into effect, next December, normally, Google intends to stop relaying Canadian news in its search engine.
Since the Bard bot can provide links to news content, uncertainty remains.
Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez did not react to this new development on Thursday. Last I heard, he still believed the feds and Google could come to some common ground during the regulatory process.
His colleague François-Philippe Champagne, the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, is working on a bill aimed at regulating artificial intelligence, C-27, the detailed study of which must begin. next fall.
Shortly before its adoption at second reading in the House of Commons, Minister Champagne had issued a call to action. “We are asking more and more questions about the turn of artificial intelligence,” he pleaded in an interview with La Presse, regretting the opposition of the conservatives to the proposed measures.
More than a thousand personalities and specialists in artificial intelligence, including Quebec luminary Yoshua Bengio as well as Tesla CEO Elon Musk, called last March for a six-month break in research in this area.