There’s a major update tonight from Google’s AI team running Bard. Google is expanding its Artificial Intelligence across its vast array of Internet apps and services. Google’s Bard has a huge advantage in the AI space with its real time Internet connection and the tech giant is now taking advantage of that in a big way.
Try the latest features at bard.google.com.
Bard Extensions can find and show you relevant information from the Google tools you use every day — like Gmail, Docs, Drive, Google Maps, YouTube, and Google Flights and hotels — even when the information you need is across multiple apps and services.
For example, if you’re planning a trip to the Grand Canyon 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.
Another example could be applying for a new job and using Bard to help out. You could ask Bard to “Find my resume titled June 2023 from my Drive and summarise it to a short paragraph personal statement,” and continue collaborating on your new cover letter.
EXTENSION SAMPLES TO TRY
| Extension | Description | Sample Prompt |
| YouTube | Discover and learn from YouTube videos in your Bard conversations | Give me a template for how to write a best man speech and show me YouTube videos about them for inspiration |
| Maps | Tap into location-based information to bring your plans to life | Where can I take my 3 year old pumpkin picking and give me ideas for fall-themed crafts I can do with her. |
| Flights | Pull in real-time flight info for intuitive, personalised travel planning | Show me flights to Austin and give me ideas of things to do. How about Houston too? |
| Hotels | Search hotels based on what’s important to you, the same way you’d talk to a friend | Find hotels for a 4-day trip to San Francisco for new years eve |
| Gmail | Find, summarise and get quick answers from your own emails | Summarise our recent college tour reservations from Gmail and put them in a table with their date and time |
| Docs | Find, summarise and get quick answers from your own docs | Find the doc from Ashley about the neighbourhood clean-up project and summarise the proposal for me in 5 bullets |
| Drive | Find, summarise and get quick answers from your PDFS | Find the most recent lease agreement from my Drive and check how much the security deposit was |
“If you choose to use the Workspace extensions, your content from Gmail, Docs and Drive is not seen by human reviewers, used by Bard to show you ads or used to train the Bard model. “
Google
COMBINE EXTENSIONS
| Extension | Sample mixed prompts |
| Docs & Maps | What places are listed in my Costa Rica 2024 doc ↳Show me a map of all those spots |
| Gmail, Flights, Hotels | What dates did Erik propose in the email about the Grand Canyon hiking trip? ↳Show me flights to Phoenix for those dates and hotels that are near the entrance of Grand Canyon National Park ↳ Create an itinerary of hiking the Grand Canyon rim to rim and include a suggested packing list |
| Flights & Maps | Find me nonstop flights to Chicago for the Thanksgiving holiday. Show me top rated places to buy flowers after I land. And give me advice for meeting my girlfriend’s parents for the first time, I’m SO nervous! |
| YouTube & Lens | Here’s the new car seat i bought, show me the tutorial video for how to install it. |
| YouTube + Maps | Find hotels in Paris for a week in November and videos of kid-friendly things to do there. |
“Today we’re rolling out Bard’s most capable model yet,” Google’s blog post says.
“We’re expanding access to existing English language features to new languages and countries, Bard now integrates with Google apps and services for more helpful responses, and it has an improved “Google it” feature so you can double-check its answers.”
This is important. As amazing as it is, AI cannot be taken 100 percent as a factual generator of content. Yes, it can get you started – but you should always double check sources. The good news .. that verification process is a lot easier now. When you click on the “G” icon, Bard will read the response and evaluate whether there is content across the web to substantiate it. When a statement can be evaluated, you can click the highlighted phrases and learn more about supporting or contradicting information found by Search.
When someone shares a Bard chat with you through a public link, you can continue the conversation and ask Bard additional questions about that topic or use it as a starting point for your own ideas. This really opens up that conversational interaction between AI and other people.
When it comes to privacy Google says the following, “We’re committed to protecting your personal information.”
“If you choose to use the Workspace extensions, your content from Gmail, Docs and Drive is not seen by human reviewers, used by Bard to show you ads or used to train the Bard model.
“And of course, you’re 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.”
At the heart of Bard is Google’s PaLM 2 model. Based on users feedback, Google applied reinforcement learning techniques to train the model to be more intuitive and imaginative.
So, whether you want to collaborate on something creative, start in one language and continue in one of 40+ others, or ask for in-depth coding assistance, Bard can now respond with even greater quality and accuracy.