Google releases biggest BARD upgrade to date

Scrambling to take share from Microsoft's ChatGPT, Google this week rolled out Bard Extensions, which enable users to import data from other Google products including Gmail, Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Flights, Google Hotels, Google Maps, YouTube and others, while also saving them time by getting results faster.

Google is believed to be working on integrations for other providers' products as well.

Because the Extensions enable Bard to answer questions about users' personal details, they can now do things like asking Bard to plan a trip for them, including flight options and driving directions.

Other upgrades to Bard include multiple language capability, and a major update to the PaLM large language model on which it is built.

A new "double check" feature will enable users to compare Bard's responses with those from Google Search, anytime users have doubts about the accuracy of results.

And users can now share their conversations with Bard with a second user, who can then further pursue the chat themselves.

Note that Google continues to warn that Bard sometimes "may display inaccurate or offensive information".

Users can opt out of the Bard extensions anytime.