Google's CEO Under Fire From Employees After 'Botched' AI Product Demo

Google employees are reportedly not holding back their feelings as they blast CEO Sundar Pichai over the Bard launch and company's recent layoffs.

There's a lot of Bard feeling out there.

Google employees are reportedly criticizing the search engine giant's top brass, particularly CEO Sundar Pichai, following a disastrous demonstration of the company's AI chatbot Bard.

Google shares tumbled and snark soared after the digital search company posted an online ad, powered by Bard that provided incorrect information about a telescope used to take the first pictures of a planet outside the solar system.

Staffers took to the internal forum memegen to express their thoughts on the Bard announcement, referring to it as “rushed,” “botched” and “un-Googley,” according to CNBC, which said it had viewed messages and memes.

“Googley,” is a term that management uses to motivate workers and loosely means being ambitious and hardworking, with respect and teamwork in mind.

“Dear Sundar, the Bard launch and the layoffs were rushed, botched, and myopic,” read one meme that included a serious picture of Pichai. “Please return to taking a long-term outlook.” The post received many upvotes from employees.

"Rushing Bard to market in a panic validated the market’s fear about us,” one highly-rated meme read. The attached photo was of a bird doing a facepalm.

Another meme referred to last month’s announced layoffs, which resulted in the loss of 12,000 jobs, or 6% of the company’s workforce. 

The meme featured a photo of actor Nicolas Cage smiling and said “Firing 12k people rises the stock by 3%, one rushed AI presentation drops it by 8%.”

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bard is a direct rival to ChatGPT, which has become the center of almost every tech-related conversation since it was introduced at the end of November.

Even before its debut Bard was getting hammered as people mocked the name on social media.

Microsoft  (MSFT) - Get Free Report and Google are fiercely competing to determine the next generation of internet search.

The Redmond, Wash., software giant, an early investor in ChatGPT creator OpenAI, sent invitations to journalists inviting them to a last-minute event on Feb. 7 to demonstrate how its Bing search engine will integrate with the chat technology.

Google tried to torpedo its rival's plans and draw coverage to itself with a pair of events.

ChatGPT has shown the future of search engines: shorter, more concise results, and exact answers to the questions people ask, instead of the current collection of links.

The new AI-powered search engines are also more humanlike enabling conversational interaction with the user, significantly reducing the time required for a search and increasing efficiency.