Google’s AI chatbot does personal tapping in Gmail

SAN FRANCISCO: Google on Tuesday (September 19) said it has integrated Gmail, YouTube and other tools into its Bard chatbot, as the tech giant tries to convince users that generative AI is useful and not dangerous or just… Not a fad.

The search engine juggernaut has carefully developed AI powers for years, but it ran into trouble when OpenAI released ChatGPT late last year and teamed up with Microsoft to make its capabilities available to users around the world. Fell.

Google launched its own Bard chatbot earlier this year, making it available in more than 40 languages ​​and overcoming data privacy concerns from regulators in Europe.

The company said its advanced chatbot will allow users to perform new tasks such as summarizing a confusing series of emails into its main points or tapping on Google Maps to find the best route to a vacation destination.

The company said these so-called Bard extensions will also be available to retrieve key points from content in Google Docs and Google Drive, including PDFs.

The new powers will also help highlight incorrect answers with a new button that will compare Bard output with the results of a Google search query on the same topic, flagging discrepancies.

Hopefully this will provide comfort to those who are troubled by the so-called “hallucinations” or bad reactions that are a constant threat when using Bard, ChatGPT or Microsoft’s Bing.

Bard’s new capabilities closely match Microsoft’s offerings that equip its Office 365 apps with AI powers, though they come at additional cost to customers and are not available through the Bing chatbot.

To address privacy concerns, a pop-up on the Bard webpage said the new powers would only access personal data “with your permission”.

It says any scraping of personal content from Google’s workplace tools — like Docs, Drive or Gmail — will not be used to target ads, train bards, or be viewed by human reviewers.

“Your privacy settings are always under your control when you decide how you want to use these extensions, and you can turn them off at any time,” the company said in a blog post.

According to industry data, the enduring power of generative AI chatbots has not been confirmed due to the low usage of ChatGPT over the past several months, hence the new product.

Additionally, the integration of the Bing chatbot into Microsoft’s search engine earlier this year failed to make an impact on Google’s overwhelming search dominance.

However, governments and tech companies insist that generative AI is the next big chapter of technology and have increased spending on new products, research and infrastructure.