Google Bard can now delve into your Gmail inbox and Drive storage to answer questions and retrieve information

Google’s Bard AI chatbot has received a significant upgrade, making it more versatile and efficient. Bard can now delve into your Gmail inbox and Drive storage to answer questions and retrieve information, eliminating the need to sift through emails or documents manually.

The new integrations, referred to as extensions, empower Bard to perform tasks like summarizing email contents or highlighting crucial points within documents stored on Google Drive. This feature, currently available only in English, offers a wide range of practical applications.

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Concerns about privacy and data usage may arise when granting Bard access to personal email and documents. However, Google assures users that this information won’t be used to train Bard’s public model or be viewed by human reviewers. Importantly, these integrations are opt-in, and users can disable them at any time.

To utilize this feature, users can prompt Bard to search within Gmail directly by using the “@” symbol before their query, such as “@mail.” Alternatively, they can simply ask questions like, “Check my email for information related to my upcoming flight.”

Bard’s capabilities extend beyond Gmail and Drive; it can also integrate with Maps, YouTube, and Google Flights. This means you can ask Bard for real-time flight updates, discover nearby attractions, or find YouTube videos on specific topics.

“The reason we’re starting with this experiment… is primarily because it’s the first time a language model product is truly integrating with your personal data,” Krawczyk says. “We want to make sure we get that right.” Krawczyk adds that Google plans on expanding Bard’s integrations to more “products across Google as well as partners outside of Google.”

In addition to these integrations, Google is enhancing Bard with a “Google It” button to verify Bard’s answers against Google Search results. Verified information is highlighted in green, while unvalidated answers are in orange, providing users with transparency and context.

Furthermore, Bard now supports continuing conversations based on shared links, facilitating collaborative interactions. Since its launch, Bard has steadily grown in functionality, including code generation and debugging, Google Sheets functions, and integration with Google Lens for image-related tasks.

Google’s commitment to expanding Bard’s integrations across various products and partners demonstrates its dedication to creating a chatbot that truly integrates with personal data while respecting user privacy.