Google has announced key updates to its AI chatbot Bard, integrating it into various services and apps including Gmail, YouTube and Drive.
The company is launching “Bard Extensions” allowing users to interact and collaborate with Bard to find relevant information from Google tools such as Gmail, Docs, Drive, Google Maps, and YouTube. Google explains that this will work even when the information needed is across multiple services and apps.
Part of a statement announcing the new feature reads, “You can enable Bard to interact with information from your Gmail, Docs and Drive so you can find, summarize and answer questions across your content.”
By using Bard Extensions, you can now retrieve and use real-time information across information sources. Yury Pinsky, Bard’s director of product management, says, for example, if one is planning a trip, they can ask Bard to check for appropriate dates from Gmail, find flight and hotel information, see Google Maps directions to the airport and watch YouTube for suggestions on what to do on the trip.
Extensions are enabled by default, and you can disable them at any time. The feature is currently available in English with the company saying a wide rollout in other languages is coming soon.
Recently, there have been complaints about Bard’s “hallucinations” – irrelevant or factually incorrect output generated by the chatbot. To address this, Google has updated the “Google it” (the [G] button) feature to double-check Bard’s AI-generated responses by finding content that’s likely similar to or different from its statements. However, Jack Krawczyk, Google’s Product Director for Bard, adds that this is still an area that needs improvement.
Users can also share their Bard conversations with others through the public link-sharing feature. Through this feature, you can continue the conversation in your account and build on what another user started.
