Google is moving rather quickly with its artificial intelligence initiatives, and it’s evident every time I put my fingers on the keyboard. I’d say it’s moving too quickly, but it continues to assure us that it’s being as responsible as possible with AI like Bard and the mysterious Gemini as it can. Time will tell. In the meantime, Bard just received two new updatates – real-time responses and better email summaries!
Real-time responses
Normally, you ask Bard a question and have to wait while its sparkly icon rotates and glimmers. Then, it spits out a massive chunking of data for you to consume unlike its counterpart – ChatGPT – which reveals its response one line at a time.
Now, Google is playing catch up with the quality of life polish here and doing the same. Yep, for now on (and I’ve already tested this), it will respond at a pace which you can read it instead of feeling overwhelmed. It’s also pretty satisfying to watch unfold, but that’s beside the point.
Improved email summaries
Next up are improved email summaries. Bard’s newfound prowess in managing your emails thanks to the recently added extensibility with Workspace apps and services like Maps, Gmail and more mean that you can ask it just about anything about your data and it will try its best to respond. With this latest improvement, it can sift through your emails and summaries several correspondence at once.
Powered by Google’s PaLM 2 AI model, it only works in English at this time. However, as it rolls out more widely and as the company adds more languages, I’d like to know in the comments if you’re going to utilize this or if you wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole. Google’s already had their hands on our email for a decade, sifting through it for less useful purposes, right? I’m not saying it’s right, but it’s just an observation. The tech giant has emphasized privacy and caution with these extensions and with Bard in general, but it’s up to you to decide if you’re going to ask it about your emails.
Bard is quickly becoming
Comparing Bard to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, it’s clear that Google’s offering is quickly becoming more end-user friendly. In fact, it’s getting so friendly that it’s about to be injected into Google Assistant, just as I predicted. Despite this, I still find that it’s much less intelligent than ChatGPT is. Despite even that, I find myself firing it up more often than OpenAI’s golden child due to its accessibility, so I suppose that goes to say a lot about it.
I imagine that Google will kill Bard off within the next year or three as it’s just a playground for it to test its chops with replacing the extremely stupid Assistant’s “capabilities”. At the end of the day, so long as it does what it needs to do, I don’t really see it as a “Google Graveyard” item. I’ve always argued against this fact anyway as everything (almost everything) Google does ends up dying and its DNA directly influences something else a year or a few years afterward. Let me know in the comments how you feel about this and if you’re currently utilizing Bard’s extensions!
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