Google's Bard AI would choose an iPhone over an Android device - or would it?

What smartphone OS does Google's Bard AI vouch for? Well, apparently it's iOS going by a tweet that flagged up a response from the AI indicating this.

Developer Junaid Abdurahman has been playing around with Bard and posed this question, posting on Twitter that the AI said it prefers iOS for a few reasons.

Namely that iOS is easy to use and highly secure, to name a couple of the points put forward by Bard in favor of Apple's mobile operating system.

However, Wccftech, the tech site that spotted this tweet, asked Bard the same question, and we're told that it preferred Android (due to better customization options, more apps, and phones being more wallet-friendly compared to iPhones).

Other Twitter users observe that Bard appears to be reflecting the questioner and choosing to favor whichever platform the user mentions first.

That could be coincidence, of course, but it seems to be the case that Bard will give different opinions based, most likely, on whatever data it happens to pull off the web at the time.

This is the problem with large language model (LLM) AIs, of course - they aren't really intelligent as such, they are just making use of other people's thoughts and musings online. (Admittedly, often very convincing use).

ChatGPT (which powers Microsoft's Bing AI), on the other hand, sits on the fence and won't pick when questioned about what's the best mobile OS. This seems a wiser approach, with ChatGPT noting that it very much depends on your personal preferences and requirements.

In the great AI chatbot arms race, Bing AI has been in the lead for some time now. Microsoft is developing new features at a rate of knots, and while Google is throwing more and more resources behind Bard, it's struggling to keep up with the rival AI.