Google’s Bard AI chatbot has recently extended its capabilities beyond traditional web searches. It can now access and assist you with content from your Gmail, Docs, and Drive, making it a versatile tool for managing information.
With this new integration, you can instruct Bard to perform various tasks, such as locating and summarizing the contents of an email or highlighting crucial aspects of a document stored in your Drive.
These integrations, referred to as extensions by Google, offer practical solutions to the often time-consuming process of sifting through numerous emails or documents to find specific information.
You can instruct Bard to perform tasks based on the information it discovers in your Gmail, Drive, and Docs. Subsequently, Bard can utilize this information in various ways, including generating charts or creating concise bullet-point summaries. It’s important to note that this feature is currently available only in English.
Privacy Concerns Addressed
While granting Bard access to your personal email and documents might raise privacy and data usage concerns, Google has assured users that this information will not be used to train Bard’s public model, nor will it be reviewed by human assessors.
Users are not obliged to enable the integrations with Gmail, Docs, and Drive. Google will request your opt-in consent, and you have the option to deactivate it at any time.
How to Utilize Bard
According to Jack Krawczyk, Bard’s product lead, there are two primary ways to use this feature. You can instruct Bard to perform a direct search within your Gmail, for example, by prefacing your query with “@mail.” Alternatively, you can simply ask a question like, “Check my email for information related to my upcoming flight.”
Expanding Beyond Gmail, Docs, and Drive
Bard’s capabilities extend beyond Gmail, Docs, and Drive. Google has introduced integrations with Maps, YouTube, and Google Flights, significantly expanding Bard’s functions. This allows you to request real-time flight details, discover nearby points of interest, surface specific YouTube videos, and much more. Google plans to activate these three extensions by default.
‘Google It’ Feature
Google is also enhancing Bard with a new feature, the “Google It” button, which provides an additional layer of verification for Bard’s responses. This button will indicate whether Bard’s answers align with information found on Google Search or if they present conflicting information, offering users a way to double-check Bard’s accuracy.
By selecting the “Google It” button for endorsed responses, Google will distinguish confirmed information from Search by highlighting it in green. Unverified responses will be marked in orange, with hovering over the highlighted text providing additional context.
Additionally, Google is introducing a feature that allows users to extend a conversation with Bard through a shared link, enabling the continuation of a discussion initiated by someone else’s question. These enhancements make Bard a more versatile and reliable AI chatbot for information retrieval and verification.
