Google has expanded the reach of its Bard chatbot to other Google applications and services, including Gmail, Google Docs, and YouTube.
The move should make Bard a far more useful tool.
In a blog post Tuesday attributed to Yury Pinsky, director of product management for Bard, the
(ticker: GOOGL) unit said that starting Tuesday a new service called Bard Extensions “can find and show you relevant information from the Google tools you use every day—like Gmail, Docs, Drive, Maps, YouTube, and Google Flights and Hotels—even when the information you need is across multiple apps and services.”
For instance, Pinsky writes in the post that you could ask Bard to find your most recent resume from Google Drive, and to summarize it in a short paragraph to use as a personal statement for a job application.
Bard will also now allow you to double-check the accuracy of Bard’s responses using the “Google It” button.
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“When you click on the “G” icon, Bard will read the response and evaluate whether there is content across the Web to substantiate it,” Pinsky writes in the blog post. “When a statement can be evaluated, you can click the highlighted phrases and learn more about supporting or contradicting information found by Search.”
Another new feature allows you to pick up a Bard conversation that was started by someone else and sent to you through a public link.
The company noted that if you connect Bard to your personal data, the information isn’t seen by human reviewers, used by Bard for advertising targeting, or included in Bard’s model.
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Pinsky adds the new capabilities reflect updates to its PaLM 2 large language model.
“Based on your feedback, we’ve applied state-of-the-art reinforcement learning techniques to train the model to be more intuitive and imaginative,” he writes. “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.”
Write to Eric J. Savitz at eric.savitz@barrons.com
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