Google' AI chatbot Bard can connect with company's apps, services in new update
Supatman
Google launched new features for its chatbot Bard under which the generative artificial intelligence, or AI, service can now connect to user's Google apps and services.
The Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) unit launched Bard Extensions in English, to interact and collaborate with Bard.
Google said that with Extensions, Bard can find and show the user relevant information from the Google tools they use â such as Gmail, Docs, Drive, Google Maps, YouTube, and Google Flights and hotels â even when the information one needs is across multiple apps and services.
The company noted that if one uses the Workspace extensions, their content from Gmail, Docs and Drive is not seen by human reviewers, used by Bard to show users ads or used to train the Bard model.
In addition, Bard's 'Google it' button can be used to double-check Bard's AI-generated responses. When a user will click on the 'G' icon, Bard will read the response and evaluate if there is content across the web to substantiate it.
When a statement can be evaluated, a user can click the highlighted phrases and learn more about supporting or contradicting information found by Search, the company added.
Google also said that it is adding a feature by which when someone shares a Bard chat through a public link, a user can continue the conversation and ask Bard additional questions about that topic or use it as a starting point for their own ideas.
The tech giant is also expanding access to existing English language features â such as the ability to upload images with Lens, get Search images in responses, and modify Bard's responses â to more than 40 languages.
Google noted that all these new features are possible because of updates it has made to its next generation large language model (LLM) PaLM 2. In August, it was reported that Google aims for its next-generation AI foundation model Gemini to power services ranging from Bard to enterprise apps such as Google Docs and Slides.
In July, the company launched Bard in Europe and Brazil and that the AI tool could be interacted in with over 40 languages, and included new features such as using images in chat.
Google, however, has been trying to catch up with Microsoft (MSFT)-backed OpenAI's ChatGPT. According to a report from website analytics firm Similarweb, ChatGPT continues to rank among the largest websites in the world, drawing 1.4B worldwide visits in August compared with 1.2B for Microsoftâs Bing search engine.
Similarweb ranked openai.com number 28 in the world, mostly on the strength of ChatGPT.
Generative AI services have taken the world by storm, since the launch of ChatGPT. Companies around the world have launched their own LLMs. Baidu's (BIDU) Ernie Bot, Alibaba's (BABA) Tongyi Qianwen and Tongyi Wanxiang, Google's Bard, OpenAI's DALL-E, Midjourney Inc.'s Midjourney are to name a few.
Meta Platforms (META) have also unveiled several LLMs, such as AudioCraft to generate audio and music from text prompts; and an all-in-one multimodal and multilingual AI translation model called SeamlessM4T. The company also introduced Llama 2, in collaboration with Microsoft, in July for free research and commercial use.

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