After its announcement at the I/O event last May, we had to wait a bit until the arrival of the Extensions for Google Bard. But they are now available, although for the moment only in English, to allow the chatbot access to its users’ Gmail, Drive and Docs to find answers and information. In addition, it can also connect to other third-party services outside of Google to locate more data.
Extensions, among other services, allow Google Bard to connect to Gmail, Drive, Docs, YouTube, Maps and Google Flights. Also to hotels. For apps in the Workspace suite, Bard can review documents and emails to locate the specific information requested.
Google Bard, once received the order to review elements in the aforementioned services, and in those of authorized third parties, takes a few moments to find the requested information and access it. Once detected and analyzed, the chatbot will show a concise response about what was received, as well as a summary of the email messages with the information, as well as other elements.
Regarding privacy, Google assures that “the contents of Gmail, Docs or Drive are not reviewed by humans. Bard does not use them to display personalized advertising, nor to train the model.
Once Google Bard, now available throughout the EU, has accessed some data, you can use it to find real-time information on flights and hotels, directions on Google Maps or YouTube videos. All without having to manually communicate the information needed to Bard.
But this is not the only news that Google has confirmed. Thus, the Search with Google button will now have more functions than just offering suggestions for questions. When you press it, Bard will read your response and evaluate whether there is content on the web to support it or not.
Additionally, after previously launching in English, features such as uploading to Google Lens, visual feedback, and edits are now available in 40 languages, including Spanish. The link-based conversation sharing feature is also expanded, so you can continue Bard conversations started by other users.
From Google they point out that These new features are due to the latest updates to PaLM 2which among other things has involved using state-of-the-art reinforcement learning techniques to train the model to be more imaginative and intuitive.
