Google launched Bard in March 2023, its hurried response to ChatGPT, built on the LaMDA conversational model. The rollout followed a shaky announcement in February — including a factual error in its own demo — that wiped billions off Alphabet's market value.

Bard opened to the public through a waitlist and gradually expanded, but it consistently trailed ChatGPT in capability through 2023. Google positioned it as an experiment while its stronger Gemini models were still in training.

In February 2024 Google retired the Bard name entirely, rebranding the assistant as Gemini and folding it into the model family that succeeded it.