Report: Google employees say Bard reveal was ‘botched’ while slamming CEO Sundar Pichai

Ben Schoon | Feb 10 2023 - 11:47 am PT

Google pulled the cover off of its ChatGPT rival, Bard, earlier this week, but Google employees say that the debut was “rushed” and “botched,” and point the blame at CEO Sundar Pichai.

This week has been one where the conversation was dominated by AI. On Monday morning, Google publicly revealed Bard, a LaMDA-powered product that is poised to rival ChatGPT with applications within Search and likely other Google products. The reveal came somewhat unexpectedly, and just a day ahead of a Microsoft event where the company revealed the “new Bing” which is powered by ChatGPT through Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI.

As reported by CNBC, Google employees have since gone to the internal forum “Memegen” with criticisms over how Google, and specifically CEO Sundar Pichai handled the announcements.

Memes created by Googlers apparently struck a fairly serious tone, and directly criticized Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai. One meme read “Dear Sundar, the Bard launch and the layoffs were rushed, botched, and myopic” asking Pichai to “please return to taking a long-term outlook.” Another brought out that “Rushing Bard to market in a panic validated the market’s fear about us,” seemingly responding to the hefty stock drop Alphabet took following the reveal of Bard and Microsoft’s event.

That sentiment was built on with another meme that said “Firing 12k people rises the stock by 3%, one rushed AI presentation drops it by 8%,” referring to January’s mass layoffs that trimmed Google’s workforce by 6% as well as Wednesday’s event, where Google was expected to offer much more detail on Bard, but only presented brief slides on the topic. At the event, one presenter forgot a device that was required for that demo, while some Google employees weren’t even aware of the event at all.

Another meme brought out that “Sundar, and leadership” are being “comically short-sighted and un-Googlely in their pursuit of ‘sharpening focus.'” Over the past several months, Google has slowed hiring and pulled the plug on some projects, such as lessening its Area 120 developments and shutting down Stadia.