First time I heard that Bard was available in EU, it was around mid July 2023. I was so excited about it, because I’m a Google fan, have been using its products almost from the beginning, around the start of 2000. And since it was right before my holiday, I decided to test and use it as my personal vacation assistant.

The Good

I went to Berlin and then Prague for my holiday with my family. As a summary, Bard is very good in delivering general information, such as places to visit, how to get there and the businesses’ opening hours, just as I expected if I had just used the regular Google search engine. The benefit in using Bard instead of Google search engine, is obviously it is a conversation, so Bard can e.g. remember my hotel without me having to re-type the name of my hotel over and over again. Furthermore, Bard would give me answers and recommendations directly just like normal conversations with human do, so that I don’t have to click the result links. Bard could even provide me an itinerary suggestion what to do during my 4-day stay in Prague.

There is even a “Google it” button for every answer, so it is very convenient to double check the results.

I don’t want to bore you with where Bard got the answers right, because it is not very spectacular.

The Quite Bad

This is where it is interesting. Bard can have a few missteps as well. Some information Bard gave me were misleading and some were even dead wrong.

Bard told me the price for the 24h-group ticket in Berlin is 25.50 euros, where in reality it was 29 euros. But this was the only misinformed answer Bard gave me in Berlin. So it is forgiven.

In Prague, however, I have a feeling Bard needs to learn the city more. It seems like that Bard is not updated with information about Prague. A few answers were completely wrong.

For example, Bard told me that the hotel I was staying did not have an elevator. Wrong. The hotel has an elevator, and it is working. And it does not look like that the elevator was just installed a few days ago.

Or, when I asked Bard how long it would take from my hotel to the Prague Central Station, according to Bard, it was just a 10-minute walk.

When I looked up the Google Map, the distance was 3.5 kilometers. There is no way a normal person can walk that distance for 10 minutes. A professional runner maybe. As a matter of fact, Google Map suggested it would take me 44 minutes, which was about right (well, in reality it was around 35 minutes, but 44-minute was a closer answer).

Learning Abilities

The most confusing one (but most interesting, because this was when I learned that I can teach Bard, as well) was when I asked Bard how to get to the Fashion Arena Prague Outlet.

Only for 4 simple steps. According to Bard, the outlet provides even a shuttle service that runs every 30 minutes.

It looks simple and straight-forward. The problem is, it is a wrong address, hence a wrong direction and wrong shuttle service!

So I challenged Bard.

A stubborn SOB. He still gave me the wrong address. At least he was apologizing. So, I had to give him the correct address (is Bard a him, by the way?)

Then I asked Bard again how to get there. Now that he had the right address, he gave me also the right direction.

Now, he learned something.

Because I’m a curious person, I wanted to know why Bard thought there was another location. After having several prompts (too boring to be shown here), I found out that the outlet used to have two locations. But now only one.

Conclusion

I will excitingly but cautiously continue using Bard (and install ChatGPT on my Android). It is still in an experiment phase, after all. AI is good, but always check with the reality.