Google Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai took to Google on Tuesday to announce a host of new features on Bard, the company’s new AI tool. The new rollout hopes to make it easier for users to optimize their Bard experience by tying the tool to other Google applications.
"We’re adding extensions to Bard so you can connect it to your favorite Google apps including Gmail, Drive + Docs for even deeper collaboration," Pichai said in an X tweet. "We’re also updating how we validate the claims in Bard’s responses with an improved 'Google It' button plus more (features)."
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In connecting Bard to a user’s other Google apps and services, the company hopes to immerse its AI chat bot more personally into the user’s everyday life.
“One of the biggest benefits of Bard, an experiment to collaborate with generative AI, is that it can tailor its responses to exactly what you need,” said Google Bard product management director Yury Pinsky in a September 19 blog post. “For instance, you could ask Bard to start a trip planning document for you and your friends, draft up your online marketplace listing, or help explain a science topic to your kids. And now, Bard is getting even better at customizing its responses so you can easily bring your ideas to life.”
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With Google’s new Bard Extension, users can easily dig up relevant data from the Google tools they’re already using, such as Gmail, Docs, Drive, Google Maps, YouTube, and Google flights and hotels, Pinsky noted – even if that data is spread across different apps.
“For example, 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,” he said.
Google has also created a built-in fact-checker tool to back up the information Bard is providing.
Users can also now double-check data and information with Bard’s “Google it” tab. By clicking the button, Bard will self-fact-check its own responses and “evaluate whether there is content across the web to substantiate it,” Google reported.
Bard is also offering a way for online Google users to continue conversations when a person shares a Bard chat via a public URL 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,” Pinsky said.
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