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Google parent Alphabet has lost US$100 billion in market share after an error made by its ChatGPT competitor sent its stock price spiraling down.
Alphabet’s shares slid by about 8% to its lowest on February 8 at US$98.08 after ending the previous day at US$106.77. It stands at US$99.55 at the time of writing.
The drop came after Bard, Google’s newly launched chatbot, made a mistake in a demo that the company itself posted. In the demo, Bard noted that the James Webb Space Telescope “took the very first pictures of a planet outside of our own solar system.”
According to NASA, the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope was the first to accomplish this feat.
The blunder may cost Google precious time as the company races toward AI supremacy. It’s currently in competition with Microsoft, which recently poured US$10 billion into OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT.
China’s also not far behind, with Baidu expected to release a ChatGPT-style bot called Ernie as early as March. Alibaba is reportedly conducting internal testing for its own AI bot.
See also: Indonesian startups push back on Google Play’s new billing rules
Editing by Thu Huong Le and Dhania Putri Sarahtika
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