Bard, an AI experiment by Google, has been helping people explore their curiosity, augment their imagination and ultimately get their ideas off the ground — not just by answering questions, but by also helping users build on them. Since its launch as an early experiment in March, Google has been including new features and capabilities in Bard, and today, the company announced Bard’s biggest expansion to date.
Bard is now available in most of the world, and in the most widely spoken languages. Starting today, Bard will be available in over 40 languages, including nine Indian languages – Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Gujarati, and Urdu. Google has also expanded Bard’s access to more places, including Brazil and across Europe. As part of its bold and responsible approach to AI, Google has proactively engaged with experts, policymakers and privacy regulators on this expansion. And as it brings Bard to more regions and languages over time, Google continues to use its AI Principles as a guide, incorporate user feedback, and take steps to protect people’s privacy and data.
Google is also launching new features to help users better customize their experience, boost their creativity and get more done, including the ability to add images in Prompts, Listen to Bard’s responses out loud, and easily adjust Bard’s response to be longer, shorter.
Starting today, users can listen to Bard’s responses in over 40 languages. This is especially helpful if users want to hear the correct pronunciation of a word or listen to a poem or script. Simply enter a prompt and select the sound icon to hear Bard’s answers. Users can also now change the tone and style of Bard’s responses to five different options: simple, long, short, professional or casual. This feature is live in English and will expand to new languages soon.
To help users boost their productivity, Google is adding new ways to pin and rename conversations with Bard in over 40 languages. Now when users start a conversation, they’ll see options to pin, rename and pick up recent conversations in the sidebar. Google has also made it easier for users to share part or all of their Bard chat with their network. With shareable links, users can share their ideas and creations with others in over 40 languages.
Google is bringing the capabilities of Google Lens into Bard. Whether users want more information about an image or just need help coming up with a caption, they can now upload images with prompts and Bard will analyze the photo to help. This feature is now live in English (US), and will be expanded to more languages soon.
In May, Google moved Bard to PaLM 2, a far more capable large language model, which has enabled many of its recent improvements — including advanced math and reasoning skills and coding capabilities. In the past few weeks, coding has already become one of the most popular things people do with Bard. Google today introduced a new feature that allows users to export Python code to Replit, in addition to Google Colab. This feature is now live in over 40 languages.