Google chatbot can connect to your mailbox

Google announced Tuesday that Bard, its AI-generating chatbot, can now connect to the company’s other services — inbox, YouTube, Maps, etc. — another step in the race to popularize the technology. “For example, if you are planning a trip to the Grand Canyon (A project with multiple tabs)You can ask Bard to fetch dates that suit everyone in Gmail, look up flights and hotels, check the route to the airport in Google Maps, and even watch YouTube videos about activities to do on site – all in the same conversation», explains a press release issued by the American group.

The internet giant has been developing advanced AI systems for years, but was surprised by the success of ChatGPT (OpenAI) at the end of 2022 and the launch of Microsoft’s new Bing search engine in February. Generative AI capabilities. Google launched Bard at the same time, a chatbot capable of producing all kinds of texts (editorials, articles, instructions, dialogues, etc.) based on a simple query in everyday language, like ChatGPT.

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The new tool introduced Tuesday is called “Cool extensionsIt can also extract data from Google Docs and Google Drive (storage), including documents in PDF format, the company said. It should also help users get rid of “Hallucinations“, when the program does not have an answer to the question asked and invents an answer – because it works thanks to a linguistic model: it does not “Understands» Not what the words mean.

new button”Search on Google»(“Search on Google“) allows you to compare Bard results with Google search results on the same topic, noting any differences. Big tech companies, led by Microsoft and Google, are rapidly deploying generative AI functionality in their online software (office, code, search, email, etc.) to turn it into a kind of personal assistant.

At the same time, they have to overcome the objections of regulatory bodies, especially European ones, because this latest generation of AI is more worrying than the previous generation in terms of data confidentiality, risks of use for malicious purposes (fraud, disinformation) or deletion. Of jobs. On the Bard web page, a window appears indicating that the news “Accessories“It will only access personal data.”excuse meAny extraction of personal content from Docs, Drive, or Gmail will not be used to target ads, Bard training, or visibility by company employees.