Google blocks the rollout of AI chatbot Bard in Canada
Canada is one of the few countries in the world that cannot access Google’s new artificial intelligence (AI)-based chatbot Bard, as the company’s war of words with the federal government over the Online News Act continues.
Google announced in a July 13 blog post that it was expanding Bard to 230 countries and territories, but Canada is missing from that list. Other countries omitted are Russia, China and North Korea.
When asked why Canada was left out at launch, a Google spokesperson told The Epoch Times, “As we continue to build Bard responsibly, we’re expanding access to more countries and regions in multiple languages. We are committed to being great partners as we work through the regulatory uncertainty in Canada, and are excited to bring Bard’s generative AI potential to Canadians soon.”
Bard was only available in the US and UK when it first launched in March. The launch of Bard in the European Union was delayed in June due to Google’s failure to address privacy concerns raised by the Irish Data Protection Commission, but that has now been rectified.
AI chatbots like Bard, ChatGPT, and Microsoft Bing allow users to interact with them in a conversational manner, with the AI then providing answers to their questions. This can lead the chatbots to write essays, plan vacations, share recipes, and much more.
The launch of Bard in several new countries coincided with a major update, allowing users to listen to responses out loud, customize the style of responses, pin and rename conversations, and use images in prompts.
Online News Act and Google
Bill C-18, which requires tech giants to make deals with and pay Canadian media for the content they link to on their platforms, led Google to announce on June 29 that it would remove links to Canadian news from its “Search, News, and Discover products.”
Google said the Liberal government had made no assurances that the regulatory process could solve structural problems in its legislation. On June 22, Meta also said Canadians would lose access to news on its social media sites because of the Online News Act.
In response, the federal government withdrew its $10 million in annual ad spend from Meta’s platforms Facebook and Instagram. Canadian news and telecommunications companies Quebecor, Bell Media, Torstar Corp., Cogeco and Postmedia Network Canada Corp followed soon after.
