Google (GOOG, GOOGL) announced a number of updates to its Bard-generated AI chatbot Wednesday at its annual I/O developer conference in Mountain View, Calif. The software is currently available in over 180 countries and allows you to use images to search and receive responses in multiple languages, as well as connect to other Google apps.
Powered by Google’s Pathways Language Model 2 (PaLM 2), the software can ask for must-see attractions in New Orleans and provide photos of those places. This is a big change from earlier versions of Bard, which worked only with text.
You can also upload an image and have Bard write a caption for it. The company provided an example of a person uploading a picture of their dog and having Bird write a few lines based on how the dog looks.
Coding is the software’s most-used feature, according to Sissi Xiao, vice president and general manager of Google Assistant and Bird. To this end, the company is introducing the ability to collaborate using code. Xiao said the assistant currently understands more than 20 coding languages and plans to add more.
Xiao said Bard will also help users aggregate content from multiple sources. As an example, she showed how students can frame college applications and find colleges that match their particular interests.
Bard can then show those universities on Google Maps, find their locations, and move all that information into a table. Then ask Bard to tell you which schools are public and which are private for whites, and it automatically adds those schools to a table that you can move directly into a Google Sheet to collaborate with your family. can do.
Google rival Microsoft (MSFT) is currently leading the generative AI story thanks to the Bing chatbot that debuted in February. But Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has been working on generative AI for years, pioneering the technology behind the software.
But Microsoft’s Bing and other generative AI releases, which were released as a result of a partnership with ChatGPT developer OpenAI, make Google look sluggish in comparison.
The company is now trying to catch up by rolling out a number of new products using generative AI, including the Bard chatbot and the generative AI capabilities of its Workspace productivity suite.
To Daniel Howley, technical editor at Yahoo Finance.keep up with him @Daniel Howley
Click here for the latest earnings reports and analysis, earnings whispers and expectations, and company earnings news.
Read the latest financial and business news from Yahoo Finance
