Google’s AI chatbot Bard catches up to generating code

Coding ability has been one of the top requests Google has received from users of its conversation AI tool Bard. On a Friday, blog post by Google Research Product lead Paige Bailey, she announced that Bard can now generate code and could serve as a vital tool for software developers. The new features of Bard could grace its users with an exceptional service of generating code, debugging, and code explanation - an advantage for new software developers.

Bard’s code generation works with over 20 different programming languages, including C++, GO, Java, JavaScript, Python, and TypeScript. It can translate code from one language to another and can also review and help users debug their source code line by line. One of its unique features is that it can help debug codes written by the user and can help troubleshoot the problem of an error message shared with it.

Google was taken unaware after the launch of OpenAI’s generative AI, ChatGPT, sponsored by its rival Microsoft. Google took up the challenge by launching Bard, believed by some Google employees as a half-baked product. Bard is relatively lagging compared to other generative AI like ChatGPT and Claude, but the recent update could see it closing the gap in the generative AI race.

Bailey cautioned that Bard is still in its early experimental stage and might present inaccurate, misleading, or false information confidently. She pointed out that Bard could give developers working code that is incomplete or doesn't produce the expected output. She wrote: “Despite these challenges, we believe Bard’s new capabilities can help you by offering new ways to write code, create test cases, or update APIs. If Bard quotes at length from an existing open source, it will cite the source”.