As vital client consideration and pleasure revolves round generative synthetic intelligence (AI) and chatbots particularly, the tempo of construction displays no indicators of slowing down. Google is now giving its chatbot – Bard – a suite of important and wide-ranging updates, together with extra Indian and international language wisdom, responses that may be learn out, saving a historical past of your conversations with Bard and the power to export Python code generated the usage of Bard (an ability that too was once enabled not too long ago).
In what’s secure to record as Bard’s greatest replace but, milestones until now have integrated Bard’s legit unveiling previous this yr, despite the fact that the pivotal second got here in summer season when Bard was once made to be had throughout 180 nations to all customers. It additionally coincided with the transfer to the usage of the PaLM 2 huge language type, or LLM.
Starting nowadays, Bard will paintings with 40 extra international languages, along with current make stronger for English, Japanese and Korean. The Indian languages will come with Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Canadian, Malayalam, Marathi, Gujarati and Urdu. Global language make stronger now comprises Arabic, Chinese, German and Spanish.
Bard additionally were given rolled out to 59 new nations, together with inside the European Union (EU) and Brazil.
Also learn:Google I/O 2023: Bard is now to be had for chat, amid in depth AI focal point
“It can be in keeping with our daring and accountable option to AI. We’ve proactively labored with numerous policymakers, regulators and mavens in this roll-out, and as we proceed to conform, we will be able to stay our AI rules as a information,” says Amar Subramanya, VP of Engineering at Google, in a briefing that HT was part of.
These updates come at a time when Google Bard is competing with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Bing chatbot, which have similar underpinnings to ChatGPT. Bard’s widening feature set gives it more tools in battle.
In a follow up to the text-to-image feature that was already part of Bard, the reverse will be true now too. A user will be able to input an image for Bard to search with (Google Lens integration comes along too). Generative AI will attempt to generate details about what it decodes from the image you’ve shared with Bard. Think of this as Google Lens, but potentially much smarter.
“This past weekend, I had this chore of cleaning up one of the desks in our home and I ended up taking a picture if it and going to Bard. Hey, can you give me ideas on how I can declutter this desk, it gave me a bunch of suggestions and it was awesome to get help in a moment that mattered,” shares Subramanya.
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Google is also enabling conversation history in Bard, something that was conspicuously missing thus far, that’ll allow users to revisit previous chats and responses. There will also be an option to choose the tone and style of responses you’d like from Bard – shorter, longer, professional or casual. For now, this vibrancy will be limited to English language chats, but expect wider support in the coming months.
Microsoft has similar response options for Bing too – more creative, more balanced, more precise, though the differences may not be as apparent in all questions a user may send its way.
The Bard chatbot, which until now was primarily geared toward text responses, will now be able to speak out those responses too. “If you generate a poem, you might actually want to listen to what was generated rather than just read it,” says Subramanya. “It’s also sometimes super useful to hear a pronunciation,” he adds.
Recently, Google Bard adopted the ability to generate Python code for app and software developers. Now, Bard will also be able to export it to Replit, a tool that lets developers run code live within a web browser.
Google Bard, which is still very much in the experimental stage (and Google reemphasizes that) is available on the web browser, but unlike Microsoft Bing and ChatGPT (in an early stage of rollout), does not have apps for Android phones or Apple iPhones for now. Bing, in fact, is also integrated within the Edge web browser apps and the SwiftKey keyboard app for smartphones.
At the Google I/O developer conference earlier this summer, Google hinted at a focus on integrating Bard within Google’s wide tool set, including Google Lens, Mail and Search.
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Microsoft, in March, had confirmed the Bing chatbot had clocked 100 million active users within weeks of launch for consumers. Google hasn’t released any official statistics on Bard’s active user base yet, but insists the more user feedback they get, the better they’ll be able to improve Bard.
Over the summer, Bing’s importance to developing the Microsoft 365 Copilot tool was highlighted at the company’s annual developer conference keynote. It’ll arrive with integration within Windows 11 and Microsoft 365 apps including the office suite, later this year.
Google is looking to plug in Bard into its own suite of apps, including Docs, Drive, Gmail and Maps. There will be third-party integrations as well, including with Adobe Firefly to help users generate high quality AI images.
“The more people use it and give us feedback, the more opportunity we have to make this model and generative AI better. We will be able to figure out how we can actually bring it to more users in a safe and responsible way,” says Subramanya.
The new options set for Bard rolls out for all customers, despite the fact that some capability might arrive in batches.