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# Google Bard lied to me to try and sell me a non-existent cloud offering
- URL: https://liverickson.com/google-bard-lied-to-me-to-try-and-sell-me-a-non-existent-cloud-offering/
- Published: 2023-07-20T19:53:53.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-17T16:25:40.000Z
- Description: I turned to Bard to help brainstorm ideas for how I can replace the OpenAI Completions API in a project that a former colleague worked on, and it helpfully recommended me three alternatives. It turns out that the Bard API doesn't exist - at least, it doesn't exist yet.
- Author: Liv Erickson
- Tags: Machine Learning, #Migrated-1786983915741, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-08-17 16:25, #Import 2026-09-04 22:48

*Just as a friendly reminder, machine learning models cannot actually lie. They are computer programs that use statistics to generate "likely" predictive text, based on what it's been fed. Lying implies a sentiment and ability to mislead. See also: "hallucinations" - machine learning models can't actually do that either.*

Today's experiment was an interesting one. I turned to Bard to help brainstorm ideas for how I can replace the OpenAI Completions API in a project that a former colleague worked on, and it helpfully recommended me three alternatives:

![](https://liverickson.com/content/images/2026/08/image-12.png)

I then asked Bard if the Bard API used the same request parameters as the OpenAI Completions API, and it helpfully informed me of the differences:

![](https://liverickson.com/content/images/2026/08/image-1-7.png)

Well, that seemed reasonable enough. I asked it how to get access to the Bard API, and it told me:

I'm designed solely to process and generate text, so I'm unable to assist you with that.

After a moment of consideration, I decided that it was likely that my use of the words "get access to" might be flagged as a form of malicious intent via prompt injection, so I reframed my question to ask how to sign up for the Bard API, and it gave me a helpful step by step:

![](https://liverickson.com/content/images/2026/08/image-2-4.png)

Bard was even helpful enough to let me know some of the requirements for getting on the waitlist.

## The Bard API Doesn't Exist

Spoiler alert, if you didn't get it from the title.

[https://www.googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/AI-ML/Google-Bard-API/m-p/538517](https://www.googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/AI-ML/Google-Bard-API/m-p/538517?ref=liverickson.com)

It turns out that the Bard API doesn't exist - at least, it doesn't exist yet. This is one of the more egregious examples of generating garbage content, because it generated false services that Google reportedly created, positioned it as a competitor to the most popular service for building AI applications today at a lower cost, told me terms and conditions for using it, and **at best** Google describes this as the service displaying "inaccurate" information.

Interestingly enough, this train of thinking still took me down a relatively helpful path - I learned a little bit more about the Hugging Face Transformers API, and was able to start making changes in the code base I'm working in to use a Hugging Face model instead of OpenAI. I still haven't gotten the performance that I want out of it, but even in just a few minutes of hacking around, and amidst some truly awful and misleading content that borders on an FTC violation, I was still able to use some of the information presented to me in a meaningful way.