Screenshot: Google
Google Bard might not have the catchiest name, but it is powered by one of the biggest names in tech. That makes Bard a major player in the AI space, alongside other giants like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Bing Chat. Now, Google is rolling out new features to Bard, including updates it announced last week at its big I/O event.
What’s new with Google Bard?
First, Bard users now have the ability to export part of a Bard conversation to both Google Docs and Gmail. You can imagine this feature coming in handy when asking Bard to draft up an outline for a presentation and you’d like to move it to a proper Doc to collaborate on, or if you need help crafting an important email. In either case, you can hit the share icon on the Bard response, then choose where to export it.
Next up, Bard now supports dark mode for the first time, an announcement that was met with cheers amongst the I/O attendance. It’s easy to find, too: There’s now a “Use dark theme” button in the bottom-left corner of the screen you can use to toggle between modes. Finally, Google is making Bard available to Workspace accounts, rather than standard Google Accounts. Workspace admins have the power to enable Bard support, so it might not work on your Workspace plan if your admin doesn’t agree to use Bard.
Google also announced a couple updates to Bard on Monday. The AI is now better at summarizing thanks to advances in Google’s large language models. Even better, Bard now cites its sources: You’ll see numbers appear throughout your response whenever Bard lists a source, and you can click it to see the source directly. That makes it easy to fact-check a response, and ensure Bard isn’t hallucinating the answer.
How to sign up for Google Bard
While Bard access used to be by waitlist-only, Google has opened up the AI bot for anyone to try. As long as you’re at least 18 years old with your own Google Account (or a Workspace account set up for Bard), you can try it out for yourself. To get started, go to Google’s official Bard site and hit “Try Bard.”
[Android Police]
