Alphabet Inc. lost $100 billion in market value on Wednesday after its new chatbot shared inaccurate information in a promotional video, feeding worries that the Google parent is losing ground to rival Microsoft Corp.

Alphabet shares slid as much as 9 percent during regular trading with volumes nearly three times the 50-day moving average. It closed more than 7 percent lower for the day.

Twitter users were quick to point out an error in Google's advertisement for its chatbot, Bard, which debuted on Monday, about which satellite first took pictures of a planet outside the Earth's solar system.

In the ad, the bot was asked about what to tell a nine-year-old about discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope. However, it incorrectly offered the response that the telescope was the first to take pictures of a planet outside Earth's solar system, when that honor actually belongs to the European Very Large Telescope.

Google has been on its heels after OpenAI, a startup Microsoft is backing with around $10 billion, introduced software in November that has wowed consumers and become a fixation in Silicon Valley circles for its surprisingly accurate and well-written answers to simple prompts.

Google's live-streamed presentation on Wednesday morning did not include details about how and when it would integrate Bard into its core search function. A day earlier, Microsoft held an event announcing that it was integrating OpenAI's ChatGPT functions into its Bing search and Edge browser.

Also this week, Chinese search engine giant Baidu said it was developing an AI-powered chatbot, while Alibaba Group also announced that its ChatGPT-like artificial intelligence tool is in internal testing.

Speaking against the hype, co-founder and CEO of OpenAI Sam Altman previously cautioned about the limitations of ChatGPT.

"It's a mistake to be relying on it for anything important right now. It's a preview of progress; we have lots of work to do on robustness and truthfulness," he twitted earlier in December.

Read more:

ChatGPT owner launches 'imperfect' tool to detect AI-generated text

(With input from Reuters, AFP)