Google faces criticism from its employees over the way the company announced its new chatbot technology, Bard, a competitor to Microsoft's ChatGPT.

Employees took to the internal forum, Memegen, to voice their opinions, calling the announcement "rushed," "botched," and "un-Googley."

The company's announcement of Bard came ahead of Microsoft's announcement of Bing's integration with ChatGPT, with CEO Sundar Pichai sharing details of the technology on Monday.

On Wednesday, Google held an event in Paris to reveal more about Bard, but some employees were not aware of the event and attendees expected to hear more about the technology. One presenter also forgot to bring a phone required for the demonstration.

During the event, search boss Prabhakar Raghavan briefly shared some slides with examples of Bard's capabilities, but the demonstration was not as comprehensive as people expected.

The event was further marred by an ad for Bard that offered an incorrect description of a telescope used to take the first images of a planet outside our solar system, attracting criticism on Twitter.

The criticisms from employees took a more serious tone, directly targeting CEO Sundar Pichai. One meme read:

"Dear Sundar, the Bard launch and the layoffs were rushed, botched, and myopic. Please return to taking a long-term outlook."

Another meme referred to the lowest category in the company's employee performance review system, saying "Sundar, and leadership, deserve a Perf NI."

Last year, Pichai called on employees to be more focused, but the rushed launch of Bard has caused concerns about the company's position in artificial intelligence.

Buy BardAI.me domain

At a December all-hands meeting, employees asked about the company's competitive edge in AI, and executives responded by saying the company's reputation could suffer if it moved too fast on AI-chat technology.

Alphabet shares have dropped more than 9% this week due to concerns about ChatGPT's threat to Google's core search business, and the company's hastened reaction to Microsoft's event.

One meme read:

"Rushing Bard to market in a panic validated the market's fear about us."

The criticism from employees follows last month's layoffs, which resulted in the loss of 12,000 jobs, or 6% of the company's workforce.

One meme featured a photo of actor Nicolas Cage with the text:

"Firing 12k people rises the stock by 3%, one rushed AI presentation drops it by 8%."