The Globe and Mail reports in its Thursday, Dec. 7, edition that for more than a year, Google has raced to build technology that could match Microsoft-backed OpenAI's ChatGPT. A New York Times dispatch to The Globe reports that on Wednesday Google released a new version of its own chatbot, Google Bard. It is vailable to English speakers in more than 170 territories and countries, including the United States, beginning immediately. The updated bot is underpinned by new AI technology called Gemini. Google said it would roll out three different versions of the technology into a wide range of products and services in the coming months. Gemini is supposed to be more powerful than Google's previous chatbot technologies. ChatGPT's debut late last year caught Google flat-footed. Google had spent years developing similar technology, but like other tech giants -- most notably, Meta -- it was reluctant to release a technology that could generate biased, false or otherwise toxic information. Google's chatbot can more accurately summarize news articles and other text documents. Gemini was also designed to analyze images and sounds, but those skills will not be rolled into the Bard chatbot until a later date.