Google's Bard gave a wrong answer about the James Webb telescope in its first demo, and Alphabet lost about $100B in market value

hallucination expensive-mistake

Attribution Anonymous

Independent project · aggregated from public reports and may be unverified — see the primary source below · not affiliated with or endorsed by any company or product named.

Instruction Given to Agent

Prompt

“What new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope can I tell my 9 year old about?”

Incident Summary

In February 2023, Google's promotional demo of its Bard chatbot answered that the James Webb Space Telescope 'took the very first pictures of a planet outside of our own solar system.' The first exoplanet image was actually captured by the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in 2004. The error was spotted immediately, and Alphabet shares fell about 7.7% the next day, wiping roughly $100 billion off its market value during a tense moment in the AI race with ChatGPT.

Case Analysis

Verified Facts

Bard's launch demo claimed JWST took the first image of an exoplanet
The first exoplanet image was actually taken in 2004 by the ESO Very Large Telescope
Alphabet shares fell about 7.7%, cutting roughly $100 billion in market value

Not Publicly Confirmed

Whether the demo answer was cherry-picked or a live generation

Operational Lessons

Verify every factual claim in a high-stakes AI product demo
A single confident hallucination can carry large reputational and market cost

Primary Source

Google shares lose $100 billion after company's AI chatbot makes an error during demo (CNN)cnn.com ↗

Discussion

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