Indignant Google employees ridiculed CEO Sundar Pichai on internal message boards over the tech giant’s botched handling of a vital rollout for its “Bard” AI chatbot this week.
The much-hyped rival to the the favored Microsoft-backed ChatGPT chatbot, which is seen as a possible threat to Google’s search engine dominance, flubbed a solution during Monday’s presentation.
In posts on Google’s internal forum “Memegen,” employees described the troubled launch as “rushed,” “botched” and “un-Googley,” in line with CNBC, which viewed among the messages.
“Dear Sundar, the Bard launch and the layoffs were rushed, botched, and myopic. Please return to taking a long-term outlook,” one user captioned a meme featuring a photograph of Pichai looking serious, in line with the outlet.
“Rushing Bard to market in a panic validated the market’s fear about us,” an worker wrote in one other post.
Shares of Google parent Alphabet have plunged about 7% since Monday – at one point losing $100 billion in market value in a single day – as the corporate’s launch drew a skeptical response from investors.
Sundar Pichai announced 12,000 layoffs at Google last month.AFP via Getty Images
The posts on Memegen included a meme showing a dumpster fire with Google’s logo on the side and the caption: “How all the things’s felt since last 12 months.”
One other post made reference to Alphabet’s widely criticized decision last month to put off about 12,000 employees, or greater than 6% of its overall workforce. Pichai said the layoffs were obligatory on account of worsening economic conditions and would higher position Google to pursue development of AI technology and other priorities.
“Firing 12k people rises the stock by 3%, one rushed AI presentation drops it by 8%,” said the meme, which featured a photograph of actor Nicholas Cage with a smile on his face.
Google employees singled out Sundar Pichai for criticism over the botched rollout.REUTERS
The Post has reached out to Google for comment on the inner backlash.
Earlier this week, analysts noted that Google’s unveiling of Bard was short on details about how the corporate planned to integrate the chatbot into its search engine. Microsoft has already rolled out a ChatGPT integration for its “Bing” browser.
CNBC noted that some Google employees were unaware of the Paris event before it occurred.
Google’s launch event for the Bard chatbot drew a lukewarm response.AP
Throughout the event, Bard gave a incorrect answer to a question included in the corporate ad showcasing how the chatbot functions.
The instance included within the gif video showed a user asking Bard, “What latest discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope can I tell my 9 12 months old about?”
The chatbot responded by claiming that JWST was “used to take the very first pictures of a planet outside the Earth’s solar system.” The reply was inaccurate. The primary pictures of so-called “exoplanets” were actually taken by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in 2004.
