evidence: - Google unveiled a slew of updates for its artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Bard at its annual Google I/O developer conference on Wednesday, per a blog post, notably eliminating the waitlist for the tool and opening access to over 180 countries. [...] Google’s AI-fueled Bard, widely recognized as its answer to ChatGPT, is getting a swath of buzzy new features as the tech giant looks to stay competitive in an increasingly popular generative AI space. At its core, the tool has notably been updated to Google’s next-generation learning model, PaLM 2, recognized for its stronger reasoning and coding capabilities, per blog details, which could help instill a sense of maturity for the months-old offering. Among other updates, Bard will now be available to a much wider audience with the elimination of its user waitlist, inviting a new level of users to provide feedback, which has previously yielded a bit of a mixed bag as the chatbot is still in its early stages. Google also added two new languages to the tool, Japanese and Korean, with 40 additional languages slated to come soon. However, such large language models are still a nascent technology, according to Sissie Hsiao, vice president and general manager of Google Assistant and Bard, and author of the announcement.