Google Bard can now connect to Gmail, Docs, Maps: how it works

In a blog post published this Tuesday, September 19, Google announces new features for its chatbot Google Bard. The competitor of ChatGPT, which had not been updated since July 13, has extensions allowing it to connect to other Google products and a source verification option. These additions, which follow updates to the PaLM 2 model, are only accessible for uses in English.

Extensions for Google Bard

Google Bard extensions now allow users to “find and display relevant information from Google tools”, like Gmail, Docs, Drive, Google Maps, YouTube or Google Hotels. Concretely, Bard is able to search for information within each service, and combine it to provide an appropriate response.

For example, if you’re planning a trip to the Grand Canyon (a project that takes up many tabs), you can now ask Bard to pull dates from Gmail that work for everyone, see real-time information on flights and hotels, get directions from Google Maps to the airport, (…) all in a single conversation.

Additionally, Google is committed to protecting personal information: extensions for Google Workspace will not use your content from Gmail, Docs and Drive for targeted advertising or to train the model.

Google Bard checks its answers

On its interface, Google Bard still indicates that it is in the experimental phase. Indeed, when it was launched, the chatbot announced that it could “sometimes make mistakes”which we were able to confirm during our test. To assure users of the veracity of the information it transmits, the AI ​​now includes a function double-checkwhich offers the possibility of accessing concordant and contradictory sources relating to the information transmitted in the responses.

Concretely, if you press the button Check answer (Google logo), the chatbot evaluates whether there is content on the web to corroborate its answer. Sentences highlighted in green offer supporting sources, while sentences highlighted in orange offer divergent sources.