Google recently rolled out multiple updates to Bard, its AI chatbot. The new features include extensions that connect Bard to more aspects of Google's portfolio, like Gmail, Docs, and YouTube. The company is continuing to experiment with artificial intelligence as part of the next wave of information retrieval. Although my initial impressions of Bard's extensions are underwhelming, anyone with masses of unread Gmail messages or a collection of ancient Google Docs to sift through may find the update somewhat interesting. "If you choose to use the Workspace extensions, your content from Gmail, Docs and Drive is not seen by human reviewers, used by Bard to show you ads, or used to train the Bard model," reads Google's announcement.

AI tools are here to stay, helping us search the web or decide what to wear, improve visual effects in movies, land a better job, and more. As time goes on, these tools will of course get smarter and bolt on more functions--such as being able to scour the web for images. That's a feature that just got added to the ChatGPT rival Google Bard. You can ask for pictures directly, as you might already do in a standard Google web search, and you can also get pictures in line with your text. In its updates log, Google says that images can "bring concepts to life, make recommendations more persuasive and enhance responses when you ask for visual information."

Google Bard, the search giant's ChatGPT rival, is already available in 180 countries and territories. But even though it's been widely available for months and was the centerpiece of Google's recent I/O event, it's missing one big region. The 450 million people living in the European Union are still unable to access Bard, or any of the company's other generative AI technologies. It's a move that has surprised lawmakers, and even Google won't say why it's holding back. Brando Benifei, the MEP leading the negotiations on Europe's new artificial intelligence rules, is not sure why the bloc had been excluded, describing the omission of the EU from Bard's rollout as a "big issue."

Google Bard is a new chatbot tool launched in the wake of competitor artificial intelligence (AI) like ChatGPT. It's designed to simulate conversations with a human and uses a combination of natural language processing and machine learning, to provide realistic, and helpful responses to questions you might ask it. Such tools may become particularly useful for smaller companies who want to offer natural language support to their customers without hiring large teams of support staff, or for augmenting Google's own search tools. Bard can be integrated into websites, messages platforms, applications on desktop and mobile, and a range of digital systems. At least it will be.