Sundar Pichai announced Bard, Google's conversational AI service, in a blog post. Built on a lightweight version of LaMDA, it would go first to "trusted testers" before a public release in the following weeks. The announcement came about two months after ChatGPT launched and less than two weeks after Google was reported to have declared an internal "code red." But in the promotional material, Bard gave a wrong answer about which telescope first photographed a planet outside our solar system, crediting the James Webb Space Telescope when earlier images had come from another instrument. Reuters spotted the error, and combined with a Paris AI event on February 8 that failed to impress, Alphabet's shares fell more than 7% that day, erasing roughly $100 billion in market value. It was widely reported at the time as a rushed announcement that had backfired.