Google expands Bard to connect with several of its other services

Google’s AI assistant, Bard, has been extended to connect with several of the company’s services, according to announcements on Sept. 19.

In a statement to CNN, Sissie Hsiao, general manager for Google Assistant and Bard, emphasized the time-saving nature of the new features. She said:

“These services in conjunction with one another are very, very powerful… Bringing all the power of these tools together will save people time — in 20 seconds, in minutes, you can do something that would have taken maybe an hour or more.”

In its own blog post, Google revealed that it has introduced Bard’s most capable model to date and said that the service is now integrated with new Google apps.

Bard originally served as a standard AI chatbot and later gained integration with Google Docs. Now, it can retrieve and display information from a wider variety of services, including Gmail, Drive, Google Maps, YouTube, and Google Flights via extensions.

In one specific example, the company explained how Bard can be used to plan a trip to the Grand Canyon. The tool can find airport directions, retrieve flight and hotel information, return relevant YouTube videos, and determine workable dates for multiple travelers based on Gmail data — all in a single conversation.

App integration is just one new feature

Apart from those app-specific features, Google said that Bard can now easily double-check answers with a “Google it” button. Plus, Bard now allows users to send and receive links to conversations and continue those conversations. Finally, Google is expanding certain Bard features currently offered in English to more than 40 languages.

Google said that it aims to protect personal information. It said that data linked to Bard will not be used in Bard advertising or training. It added that human employees will not see personal data and said users can configure privacy settings and extensions.

Bard, one of Google’s few consumer-oriented AI features, first went live in March. The company has also made various other recent announcements related to AI, including its large-language model (LLM) Gemini and its collaborative AI tool Duet.

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