Google is preparing a paid version of Bard

If it was cheaper, or part of a bundle, or included unlimited API access, I'd consider it. GPT4's high price is always in the back of my mind when I use it.

But does Bard really qualify as the second best? Gemini Pro is pretty bad. I'd choose Claude over it any day.

Gemini Ultra's claimed superiority required a mountain of prompt optimization and repeated generations to get good scores. The "CoT@32" benchmark results costs at least 32x as many tokens, probably closer to 64x with the hidden chain of thought. I don't have high hopes this mode will be affordable or fast enough for chat.