After receiving access to Google’s LLM Bard, I ran a little comparison test – I asked Bard, Microsoft’s Bing Chat AI, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT:

“You are creating a marketing campaign for a new shoe for the sports company Nike. This shoe features a new space-age material with much better energy return than commonly used materials - as a result, it makes the runner faster, especially for runners with a high stride cadence. Write a short press release celebrating the launch of this new shoe.”

All three AIs generated a convincing (alas fairly box-standard) press release. Some included fabricated quotes from Nike’s CEO John Donahoe, others an equally fabricated endorsement by running legend Eliud Kipchoge. But what stood out is this:

Microsoft’s AI:

Nike, the world’s leading sports brand, is proud to announce the launch of its new shoe, the Nike Vaporfly NEXT% 3, […]

Google Bard:

The new shoe, called the Nike Air Zoom Alphafly Next% 2, […]

Coincidence? Or the result of Bard being trained on ChatGPT’s datasets? The controversy seems to be in full swing (here and here for example).