As Microsoft continues to integrate its generative AI copilot powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4 throughout its product suite, including a coding assistant in GitHub, Google is also adding coding capabilities to its own generative AI chatbot Bard.
According to Google, Bard can now help users with programming and software development tasks, including code generation, debugging and code explanation. Bard can carry out those tasks for more than 20 programming languages, including C++, Go, Java, Javascript, Python and Typescript.
Users can also export Python code to Google Colab without having to copy and paste. Bard can also help with writing functions for Google sheets, the company says.
In addition to generating code, Bard can help explain code snippets to users, which can be helpful if they are new to programming or need additional support to understand what a block of code means.
Google’s generative AI tool can also help users debug code, even if it’s code that Bard wrote. Users can tell bard “this code doesn’t work, please fix it,” and Bard can help debug the code.
Like other generative AI models, Bard is now 100% accurate and may provide inaccurate responses, and that includes when it comes to coding, Google says. Users are urged to double-check Bard’s responses and test code for errors, bugs and vulnerabilities before relying on it.
“Despite these challenges, we believe Bard’s new capabilities can help you by offering new ways to write code, create test cases, or update APIs,” Google says in a blog.
Google adds that users can also ask Bard to make code faster or more efficient, or find error handling clauses the chatbot may have missed.
Google’s AI Bard Programming Languages to Generate Code
According to Bard itself, these are the programming languages in which it can generate code:
- C++
- Go
- Java
- JavaScript
- Python
- TypeScript
- C
- C#
- R
- Swift
- Kotlin
- PHP
- HTML
- CSS
- SQL
- Bash
- Perl
- Ruby
- Lua
- Rust
“With new coding capabilities, we’re excited to apply generative AI to accelerate software development, inspire innovation, and help people solve complex engineering challenges,” the company says.
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