Google's Bard chatbot now available in Gmail, Docs, Drive, Maps & more: Here’s how it works

Google has announced that it is rolling out a more capable version of Bard that integrates with Google apps and services including Gmail, Docs, Drive, Google Maps, YouTube, and Google Flights and hotels. For those who are unaware, Bard is an AI chatbot which Google launched earlier this year.

“We’re launching Bard Extensions in English, a completely new way to interact and collaborate with Bard. With Extensions, Bard can find and show you relevant information from the Google tools you use every day — like Gmail, Docs, Drive, Google Maps, YouTube, and Google Flights and hotels — even when the information you need is across multiple apps and services,” the tech giant announced in a blogpost on September 19, 2023.

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For example, if you’re planning a trip, you can now ask Bard to grab the dates that work for everyone from Gmail, check real-time flight and hotel information, see Google Maps directions to the airport, and even watch YouTube videos of things to do there– all within one conversation.

Or, if you’re applying for a new job and using Bard to help with the process. You could ask Bard to “find my resume titled June 2023 from my Drive and summarise it to a short paragraph personal statement,” and continue collaborating on your new cover letter.

Also read: Google Bard upgraded with amazing AI skills but is it better than ChatGPT?

It’s important to note that if you choose to use the Workspace extensions, your content from Gmail, Docs and Drive will not be seen by human reviewers, used by Bard to show you ads or used to train the Bard model. 

Google also improved the ‘Google it’ feature to double-check Bard’s answers. Now, when you use Bard's "Google it" button for responses in English, you can click on the 'G' icon, and Bard will analyse the response, checking for supporting content from the web.

Also, if someone shares a Bard chat with you through a public link, you can now continue the conversation and ask Bard additional questions about that topic, or use it as a starting point for your own ideas.

“Based on your feedback, we’ve applied state-of-the-art reinforcement learning techniques to train the model to be more intuitive and imaginative. So, whether you want to collaborate on something creative, start in one language and continue in one of 40+ others, or ask for in-depth coding assistance, Bard can now respond with even greater quality and accuracy,” Google said.