Google’s Bard AI chatbot has expanded its capabilities beyond web searches. It can now delve into your Gmail, Docs, and Drive to assist you in locating the specific information you need.
With this new integration, you can instruct Bard to perform tasks like locating and summarizing the content of an email or highlighting the most crucial aspects of a document stored in your Drive.
These integrations, known as extensions by Google, offer many practical applications. They aim to spare you the arduous task of sifting through numerous emails or documents to pinpoint a particular piece of information.
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Subsequently, Bard can utilize this information in various ways, such as generating charts or creating concise bullet-point summaries. It’s worth noting that this feature is currently available only in English.
What About Privacy?
While granting Bard access to your personal email and documents may understandably raise privacy and data usage concerns, Google has clarified that it will not utilize this information to train Bard’s public model, nor will it be subject to scrutiny by human reviewers.
You are not obligated to enable the integrations with Gmail, Docs, and Drive. Google will request your opt-in consent, and you retain the ability to deactivate it at any time.
How to Use It
To utilize this feature, according to Jack Krawczyk, Bard’s product lead, you have two primary options. You can instruct Bard to perform a direct search within your Gmail, for instance, by preceding your query with “@mail.”
Alternatively, you can simply ask a query like, “Check my email for information related to my upcoming flight.”
More than Docs and Gmail
Bard’s extensions expand beyond the realms of Gmail, Docs, and Drive. Google has also introduced integrations with Maps, YouTube, and Google Flights, broadening Bard’s capabilities significantly.
This means you can now request Bard to retrieve real-time flight details, identify nearby points of interest, surface specific YouTube videos, and much more. Google plans to activate these three extensions by default.
‘Google It’
Furthermore, Google is introducing noteworthy enhancements to Bard. Among them is a novel feature, the “Google It” button, which provides an additional layer of verification for Bard’s responses.
While this button previously allowed users to explore related topics on Google, it will now indicate whether Bard’s answers align with information found on Google Search or if they present conflicting information.
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Upon selecting the “Google It” button for endorsed responses, Google will distinguish confirmed information from Search by highlighting it in green. In contrast, any unverified responses will be marked in orange. Hovering over the highlighted text will provide additional context, shedding light on Bard’s accuracy or inaccuracies in its responses.
Additionally, Google is introducing a feature that enables users to prolong a conversation with Bard through a shared link, facilitating the continuation of a discussion initiated by someone else’s question.
