(Ottawa) Bard, Google’s chatbot, expanded its international presence on Thursday, but it’s been shying away from Canada for now. It is because its creator considers that the climate of uncertainty does not lend itself to this in the context of the adoption of the Online News Act.
The AI-powered robot is now available in more than 230 countries and territories around the world, and in about 40 languages, the company said in a blog post on Thursday. It is not landed either in China or in Russia or in Iran… or 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 said.
The web giant is at open war against the Liberal government, whose Online News Act “unenforceable”. So when it comes into effect, which is next December, normally, Google intends to stop relaying Canadian news in its search engine.
Since the Bard robot can provide links to news content, uncertainty remains.
The Minister of Canadian Heritage, Pablo Rodriguez, had not yet reacted to this new development at the time of publishing these lines, Thursday afternoon. Last I heard, he still believed the feds and Google could come to some common ground during the regulatory process.
Artificial intelligence worries in Ottawa
His colleague François-Philippe Champagne, the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, is working on a bill to regulate 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 launched a call to action. “We are asking more and more questions about the turn of artificial intelligence,” he pleaded in an interview with The Pressregretting the Conservatives’ opposition to the proposed measures.
More than a thousand personalities and specialists in artificial intelligence, including Montreal authority Yoshua Bengio and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, called last March for a six-month break in research in this area.