Google's Bard AI chatbot provided incorrect information about the James Webb Space Telescope in a promotional advertisement, incorrectly claiming it took the first pictures of exoplanets, causing Alphabet's stock to drop 8% and lose over $100 billion in market value.
In February 2023, Google released a promotional video for its new AI chatbot Bard on Twitter as part of competition with Microsoft's ChatGPT-powered Bing. The advertisement showed Bard answering a question about James Webb Space Telescope discoveries by incorrectly stating that the telescope 'took the very first pictures of a planet outside our solar system.' However, the first exoplanet images were actually taken by the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in 2004, according to NASA records. Reuters first reported the error, which was quickly spotted by astronomers on Twitter. The mistake occurred just hours before Google's Paris launch event for Bard on February 8, 2023. Following the revelation of the error, Alphabet's stock fell nearly 8% during Wednesday trading, wiping out over $100 billion in market value. The promotional video had been viewed over one million times on Twitter. Google responded that the error highlighted the importance of rigorous testing through their Trusted Tester program before wider public release. The incident occurred amid intense competition between Google and Microsoft in the AI chatbot space, with Microsoft having recently announced ChatGPT integration into Bing search.
Domain classification, causal taxonomy, severity scores, and national security assessments were LLM-classified and may contain errors.
AI systems that inadvertently generate or spread incorrect or deceptive information, which can lead to inaccurate beliefs in users and undermine their autonomy. Humans that make decisions based on false beliefs can experience physical, emotional or material harms
AI system
Due to a decision or action made by an AI system
Unintentional
Due to an unexpected outcome from pursuing a goal
Pre-deployment
Occurring before the AI is deployed