Get ready for more ways to use Bard, Google’s artificial intelligence chatbot and rival to ChatGPT. Bard can now integrate with and pull information from your Google apps like Gmail, Docs, YouTube and more, according to a blog post Tuesday by the company.
These “Bard Extensions” will find information more easily across multiple Google tools and apps, according to the post written by Yury Pinsky, director of product management for Bard.
“For example,” Pinsky wrote, “if you’re planning a trip to the Grand Canyon (a project that takes up many tabs), you can now ask Bard to grab the dates that work for everyone from Gmail, look up real-time flight and hotel information, see Google Maps directions to the airport and even watch YouTube videos of things to do there — all within one conversation.”
In terms of privacy, Google said you’re in charge of whether you want to turn on the new extensions and how you want to use them.
The company also announced that double-checking Bard’s answers will now be easier with a “Google It” button. The responses will be in English starting Tuesday.
Google said that its chatbot’s new capabilities were made possible through updates to PaLM 2, its language processing system.
Google launched the Bard AI chatbot in March this year, following ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Bing AI search, which makes use of ChatGPT. CNET has broken down ChatGPT, Bing and Google Bard to work out which is the most helpful.
Editors’ note: CNET is using an AI engine to create some personal finance explainers that are edited and fact-checked by our editors. For more, see this post.
