Google's Bard AI: A New Era of Information Search in Gmail, Docs, YouTube, and More

Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Bard has expanded its capabilities beyond mere web searches. The tech giant has integrated Bard with Gmail, Docs, Drive, Maps, YouTube, and Google Flights, enabling it to assist users in locating specific information across these platforms.

Bard’s Enhanced Capabilities

The new integration allows users to instruct Bard to perform tasks such as locating and summarizing the content of an email or highlighting crucial aspects of a document stored in Drive. This feature aims to save users from the tedious task of sifting through numerous emails or documents to find a particular piece of information.

Furthermore, Bard can utilize this information in various ways, such as generating charts or creating concise bullet-point summaries. However, it’s worth noting that this feature is currently available only in English.

Privacy Concerns Addressed

While granting Bard access to personal emails and documents may raise privacy and data usage concerns, Google has clarified that it will not use this information to train Bard’s public model, nor will it be subject to scrutiny by human reviewers. Users are not obligated to enable the integrations with Gmail, Docs, and Drive. Google will request opt-in consent, and users retain the ability to deactivate it at any time.

How to Use Bard

To use this feature, users have two primary options. They can instruct Bard to perform a direct search within Gmail, for instance, by preceding their query with “@mail.” Alternatively, they can simply ask a query like, “Check my email for information related to my upcoming flight.”

Beyond Gmail and Docs

Bard’s extensions expand beyond Gmail, Docs, and Drive. Google has also introduced integrations with Maps, YouTube, and Google Flights, broadening Bard’s capabilities significantly. Users can now request Bard to retrieve real-time flight details, identify nearby points of interest, surface-specific YouTube videos, and much more.

Enhancements to Bard

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. This button will now indicate whether Bard’s answers align with information found on Google Search or if they present conflicting information.

Google will distinguish confirmed information from Search by highlighting it in green, while any unverified responses will be marked in orange.