In a newly published blog post, Google’s Director of Product Management for Bard, Yury Pinsky, notes that one of Bard’s biggest benefits is that it can tailor its responses to exactly what you need.
The example is gives is that you could ask Bard to start a trip planning Doc for you and your friends, draft up your online marketplace listing, or help explain a science topic to your kids, but that as of today onwards, Bard is getting even better at customising its responses so you can easily bring your ideas to life with an upgrade to its internal smarts.
Bard now integrates with Google apps and services – like Gmail, Docs, Drive, Google Maps, YouTube, and Google Flights and hotels – for more helpful responses, and has improved the “Google it” feature to double-check Bard’s answers and expanded features to more places.
What has launched today is Bard Extensions, in English only to start with, which lets Bard find and show you relevant information from the Google tools we just mentioned — even when the information you need is across multiple apps and services.
The example Pinsky gives is for a trip you’re planning the Grand Canyon, which is normally a project that takes up many tabs in your browser as you check all kinds of things to get there.
Well, 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 is where you’re applying for a new job and using Bard to help with the process. 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.
You can go to bard.google.com to try it out for yourself, and unlike ChatGPT, you don’t have to pay US $20 per month to use the service.
From Google’s Bard updates page:
2023.09.19
Introducing Bard’s most capable model yet
What: Your feedback has accelerated Bard’s ability to be more intuitive, imaginative and responsive than ever before. Whether you want to collaborate on something playful and creative, start in one language and continue in up to 40+ other languages, ask for in-depth coding assistance, or learn about new topics from different points of view, Bard can help you explore possibilities with greater quality and accuracy.
Why: We believe in rapid iteration and bringing the best of Bard to the world. Your feedback has helped unlock the most capable version of Bard yet for stronger collaboration in languages and countries all over the world.
Bard can now access helpful information from Google apps
What: Bard can now retrieve and help you work with real-time info from Maps, YouTube, Hotels and Flights. You can pull together what you need across information sources and bring ideas to life easier and faster. These extensions are enabled by default, and you can disable them at any time.
Why: Just about everything we do in life involves a bit of gathering information and planning. Bard makes it easy to work together across even more sources, so you can keep your ideas moving forwards.
Collaborate with Bard on your content in Gmail, Docs and Drive
What: You can enable Bard to interact with information from your Gmail, Docs and Drive so you can find, summarise and answer questions across your personal content. Your Google Workspace data won’t be used to train Bard’s public model and you can disable access to it at any time.
Why: Now, you can collaborate not only with the world’s information, but also with your own, all in one place, with Bard as your creative partner.
