Google Lens will soon work with Bard, will also be able to identify skin conditions like rashes

Google Lens is a powerful visual search tool available in the Google app, on the web and via the search bar on your phone’s home screen (if you have an Android, of course). It allows you to search what you see in the world around you with your camera and helps simplify everyday tasks like shopping by identifying clothes and translating signs and text in foreign languages as you travel the world among other things.

In a Keyword blog post today, Google announced two new features for Lens. One is the ability to identify a range of skin conditions, such as moles, rashes, lip bumps, toenail lines, and hair loss to name a few. While that all sounds pretty gross, especially when I list it in quick succession, it can be important and helpful for anyone experiencing such dermatological issues.

By uploading a photo of the condition, Lens will give you more information, allowing you to make more informed decisions about treatment or home remedies. It’s obviously not meant to replace a real medical professional, but hopefully that would have gone without saying.

Unfortunately, Lens does save your activity in the cloud by default, so most will likely not use this feature since it ties to their potential medical history. If you don’t want your Google Lens activity saved to your Google Account, turn it off in the “Web & App Activity” section of your account settings before giving it a go.

Next, Lens is coming to Google Bard. That means you’ll be able to use it to quickly identify anything you’d like in the world around you for use in the company’s generative AI chatbot. This will give it greater context to answer your questions and discuss things with you more accurately (supposedly). This is rolling out in the next few weeks. Google gives the example of showing Bard a new pair of shoes you’ve been wanting to buy for an upcoming vacation and letting it tell you what they’re called.

From there, you can ask it to complete an outfit suggestion based on the shoes alone and tap “Google it” to be brought to a web search where you can buy the full ensemble. That sounds pretty cool, I guess, but Bard still has a long way to go before it wins me back.

To date, it’s the worst AI chatbot on the market, even after its supposed PaLM2 upgrades. I know I say that a lot, but I won’t let up until it improves. Let me know in the comments if you’ll use these new Lens features or if you’re going to avoid them for their implications.