To expand the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into people’s lives, Google has connected its AI-powered chatbot, Bard, with Gmail, YouTube and other tools. Launched in February, Google’s Bard hasn’t yet emerged as a strong competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The new update seems to be yet another attempt by the tech giant to establish its dominance in the AI space.
In a blog post earlier this week, Google said that the new Bard Extensions are “a completely new way to interact and collaborate with Bard.” Powered by the new updates, Bard can now find and show relevant information from most used Google tools such as Gmail, Docs, Drive, Google Maps, YouTube, and Google Flights, even when the information you need is across multiple apps and services, Yury Pinsky, director of product management, Bard, said in the post.
For instance, if you are applying for a new job, you can ask Bard to find your resume titled “August 2022” from your drive and summarise it in a short paragraph for a personal statement. You can also save time by asking Bard to find a specific email, document or video.
Google also assures privacy and states that when people use Extensions, their content from Gmail, Docs and Drive will not seen by human reviewers, used by Bard to show them relevant ads or used to train the Bard model, the blog post explains. "You are always in control of your privacy settings when deciding how you want to use these extensions, and you can turn them off at any time," Pinksy writes.
The new updates also help expose incorrect answers with a new button that can compare Bard output with the results of a Google search query on the same topic, an AFP report said. This can address the issue of “hallucination” or AI model generating false information. People can use Bard’s “Google it” button to easily double-check its answers
Google’s new move in the AI space is similar to Microsoft’s attempt to integrate AI into the Bing search engine and Edge browser earlier this year. In March, Microsoft unveiled Microsoft 365 Copilot, powered by GPT-4, which is designed to work like an assistant. Copilot is integrated with Microsoft's everyday apps such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams to make it easier for users to access it.
