It absolutely is. Googlers here will know that there was an internal version of ChatGPT that got canned because of halucinations.

better than chatgpt? Or canned because hallucinations were even worse?

Isn’t that Bard?

Absolutely I do. Internally they have some incredible stuff, but the leadership is terrified of letting normies try it out because of the (real or perceived I don't know) damage to the brand that would happen if it said something racist or misogynist, etc.

No way, that's what they want you to think. The idea that Google would be behind technologically would be an embarrassment they can't handle. The 3.5 level gemini pro is probably just as capable of saying racist or misogynist stuff so there's no reason why they're allowing that to be public while the "GPT-4 beating" Ultra is hidden if it's just because of that. More likely Ultra is just not as good as these benchmarks indicate and they still need some time to improve it.

Google can hardly put a picture of a white male on their website. They're so deep in the swamp of virtue signalling it's a miracle they haven't yet drowned.

Google has many photos of white males on their website wtf: https://about.google/google-in-america/

It's by no means the whole story, but Google's very significant aversion to brand risk is definitely part of why they move slowly.

(Speaking as someone who's worked on launching several somewhat risky technologies at Google.)