Google has given its Bard AI chatbot the ability to speak and respond in more than 40 languages as part of a major new update.
Upon its launch in May, the bot was as multilingual as the average person, with the ability to reply in three languages: English, Korean, and Japanese. But it has quickly transformed into a polyglot by learning Arabic, Chinese, German, Hindi, Spanish, and more tongues.
Whether it has a firm grasp of those vernacualrs remains to be seen. Despite people around the world already using chatbots like ChatGPT for their work and studies, researchers have shown that the AI helpers often fall short when responding in non-English languages.
Nevertheless, Google says Bard now supports “the majority of language coverage on the internet”.
Not only is the bot a linguist, but it also has a voice. In the UK at least, Bard is male and comes across like a voice actor for a TV advert. It’s a significant choice given that digital assistants like Siri and Alexa sound like women by default. The trait has elicited criticism from some academics, who believe barking orders at a bot wih a female voice can reinforce sexist stereotypes.
Google is updating Bard as it expands the bot to more countries, including all 27 nations in the EU and Brazil. But the tool is still firmly in the trial stage, meaning it is prone to errors and misinformation.
While Bard’s new language skills are the highlight, the bot is also getting a slew of additional improvements.
For instance, you can now upload pics for Bard to analyse using Google’s image-recognition tool, Lens. At a preview in May, Google showed it writing “funny captions” to accompany a photo of a pair of dogs. Bard can already respond to users’ questions using images.
If you’re not satisfied with Bard’s response, you can also modify it by choosing to make it either simpler, longer, shorter, more professional, or more casual.
Plus, you can share your conversations with others using links to your chats — a perk that ChatGPT has offered for a while now. Other new features include formatting and saving options that can help you manage multiple conversations, and the ability to export Python code to code-writing platform Replit.
