Google’s Bard chatbot can now find answers in your Gmail, Docs, Drive

Google’s AI-powered chatbot, Bard, has expanded its capabilities to include scanning Gmail, Docs, and Drive to help users find information. With this new integration, Bard can find and summarize the contents of an email or highlight important points in a document stored in Drive. These integrations, called extensions, aim to save users from sifting through a large amount of emails or documents to find specific information. The feature is currently only available in English.

While privacy and data usage concerns may arise from giving Bard access to personal email and documents, Google assures users that this information will not be used to train Bard’s public model or seen by human reviewers. Additionally, users have the option to opt-in and can disable the integration at any time.

To use this feature, users can either have Bard search directly within their Gmail by prefacing the question with “@mail”, or they can simply ask Bard to check their email for information.

Furthermore, Bard’s extensions are not limited to just Gmail, Docs, and Drive. Google also announced that Bard will integrate with Maps, YouTube, and Google Flights. This means users can ask Bard for real-time flight information, nearby attractions, or surface YouTube videos on a specific topic. These three extensions will be enabled by default.

Jack Krawczyk, the product lead of Bard, stated that this integration is the first time a language model product is truly integrating with personal data. Google plans to expand Bard’s integrations to more products across Google and possibly with partners outside of Google.

In addition to these integrations, Google has also made improvements to Bard, including a new feature that allows users to double-check Bard’s answers through the “Google It” button. This button will now indicate whether Bard’s answers are corroborated or contradicted by Google Search. Google is also introducing the ability to continue a conversation with Bard based on a shared link.

Since its introduction in February, Google has been steadily adding more features to Bard, including the ability to generate and debug code, as well as create functions for Google Sheets. Most recently, support for Google Lens was added, allowing users to brainstorm caption ideas for photos or find more information about them.

Overall, the expansion of Bard’s capabilities to include scanning personal data and integrating with various Google products demonstrates Google’s commitment to improving the chatbot’s functionality and providing users with a more seamless and efficient experience.