The Exciting Part of AI

Seeing images and sceneries get constructed in front of our eyes and resulting in flawless visuals is breath taking. Receiving on-point responses to our various inquiries and engaging in a constructive conversation with a web application is fascinating. Viewing personalities recorded on video having a discussion they never had in real life is jaw dropping. This is where exciting starts. But it is not what AI can only do. It can do real work making us more productive. It can make supply chain decisions. It can make medical diagnosis. It can make personalized curriculums for students based on their individual capabilities.

At the core of it, AI is possible because of two things: an advanced algorithm and data—lots of data. AI algorithms differ from what we’ve traditionally been accustomed to in previous technology innovations. They do not rely on if/then/else logic. There is no human-inferred logic at all. It is left to the machine to draw decisions based on its deep learning with the help of neural networks and data. AI feeds on data. The more the data, the better AI is in developing synopsis and characterization.

AI has become very good in making decisions on content development, customer insight, production processes and even medical diagnosis. It is one thing for AI to do what we do. It another thing for AI to do it better than us. AI now has lower error rates than those of a human. That’s where excitement turns into fear.

The Frightening Part of AI

The fear from AI falls into three camps. The first is around the bias generated by AI. AI reflects on what it learns from data. It is hard to ensure that data is inclusive of all situations. If it is a loan approval AI, is it influenced by demographics or environmental conditions? There is no standard validation of AI data. Thus, there is a concern that although AI can be precise based on the data feeding it, it can be biased. And if there is probability of bias, how can we trust its objective reasoning when it comes to sensitive areas.

The second fear from AI is loss of jobs. If AI is destined to be as good and better than a human in resolving issues, accomplishing tasks, and making decisions, it is only time before AI replaces people in the workforce. Forecasts range from 10% to 70% loss of jobs by 2030. We haven’t been good at forecasting the impact of previous innovations; nonetheless, there will be change. It is not necessarily all bad. There will be opportunities with roles never existed before, like prompt engineering. Humans can adapt to changes. The only difference here is that it is happening at an astounding speed.

Living with AI makes the third fear. AI as we know it today does not yet fit its theoretical definition of mimicking how a human brain works in thinking, rationalizing and directing behavior. People can do their taxes, paint a canvas, engage in jury duty and hold a conversation on ancient literature. We may not do all of them with expertise, but we can cross-learn and think about multitude of topics. In contrast, AI today is deep and narrow. AI image generator cannot review financial statements. But then again, it is unlikely we have a judge who is also a surgeon. We don’t know if, or when, AI capabilities will eventually converge with that of humans. But if they do, what will become of our purpose? Even with the current state of multiple specialized AI solutions where each can generate efficiencies in respective areas, will a business with a single owner employing AI to serve business operations be a state we are willing to accept and live with?

The Curiosity to Keep AI Going

We’ve been curious about AI since 2011 when IBM Watson beat Jeopardy champion and earlier in 1997 when IBM Deep Blue supercomputer beat the world’s champion in chess. The fears may be big, but the curiosity is bigger. What is else is possible? And how much is possible?

Neither of the fears above has a strong rebuttal, so they are all valid. AI can redefine who we are and what we do, especially when AI starts generating and managing new AI without any human guidance. Time magazine’s End of Humanity cover and an AI Pause request letter from AI enthusiasts make these fears more real. But it is all hypothetical. We don’t know what we don’t know. That’s why it is hard to pause now. We are all curious to know. Curiosity will continue to drive us to learn, experiment and innovate. The result can be something we never dreamed of before. Will AI help us travel in time? Will we gain the knowledge to explore outer galaxies at the speed of light because of the extra artificial neural power we will have? Will this become our new purpose and identity rather than a job title?

What to Do Today

As an individual, it is important to get comfortable with AI. If not to use, then to know well. We will all be touched by it in the near future, if not already, one way or another. We should ask questions—not out of fear but out of curiosity. And we should actively participate in developing it and making it better as it pertains to our domain and our expertise.

A business or an organization should engage in AI adoption to advance operations efficiency and decisioning precision. But in parallel, it should equally focus on social responsibility. Social responsibility is a mandatory track for the diffusion and evolution of AI. Understanding anticipated impacts and actively working to transition societies to a workable future state is the responsibility of every business benefiting from AI. The work around social responsibility is lagging, hence the fear. For it to catch up, AI advancement does not have to slow down or pause. We just have to turbo charge social awareness and practical solutioning. That goes beyond setting limiting laws and protocols. Ironically, AI may be option to help set its own social guardrail.

In practice, an organization needs to find its AI opportunities. After understanding that AI is not a blanket solution across the chain of operations, targeting efficiencies in a particular area (acquisition, production, fulfillment) is where progress and success can be achieved. From there, a respective model or algorithm is identified and secured. The marketplace has sufficient models to choose from with simple setup. Third party data can be leveraged for the AI, but if an organization wants or depends on its distinctive customer base insights, then increased efforts of first party data collection, curation, cleansing, storing, and analyzing is necessary. This will empower their AI solution to provide tailored decisions and directions supporting their unique efficiency and growth trajectory.

Raghid El-Yafouri is the Technology and Digital Transformation Consultant at Bottle Rocket Studios.

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The company says these improvements have improved Bard’s accuracy to computation-based word and math problems by 30%.

According to Google, the company is introducing a new technique called “implicit code execution” to help Bard detect computational prompts and run code in the background. The intended result is a more accurate response to mathematical tasks, coding questions and string manipulation prompts. These improvements also come with a new features that allows users to export a table to Google Sheets.

In a blog, Google leaders overseeing Bard say the improvements will make the generative AI chatbot better at answering questions such as:

• What are the prime factors of 15683615?
• Calculate the growth rate of my savings
• Reverse the word “Lollipop” for me

In the blog, Google says large language models (LLMs) are like prediction engines. Essentially, LLMs generate a response to prompts by predicting what words are likely to come next.

“As a result, they’ve been extremely capable on language and creative tasks, but weaker in areas like reasoning and math,” write Google Bard leaders. “In order to help solve more complex problems with advanced reasoning and logic capabilities, relying solely on LLM output isn’t enough.”

This new method, however, allows Bard to generate and execute code to boost its reasoning and math abilities.

According to Google, this approach is inspired from “a well-studied dichotomy in human intelligence, notably covered in Daniel Kahneman’s book “Thinking, Fast and Slow” — the separation of “System 1” and “System 2” thinking.

“System 1 thinking is fast, intuitive and effortless,” the Bard experts write. “When a jazz musician improvises on the spot or a touch-typer thinks about a word and watches it appear on the screen, they’re using System 1 thinking. System 2 thinking, by contrast, is slow, deliberate and effortful. When you’re carrying out long division or learning how to play an instrument, you’re using System 2.”

LLMs have been essentially operating under System 1, producing responses quickly but without deep thought, leading to some issues like trying to solve complex math problems.

Meanwhile, traditional computation more closely aligns with System 2 thinking as it is formulaic and flexible, but can produce impressive results with the “right sequence of steps,” Google says.

With the latest update, Google is combining the capabilities of both LLMs and traditional code – which it compared to combining System 1 and System 2 thinking.

“Through implicit code execution, Bard identifies prompts that might benefit from logical code, writes it “under the hood,” executes it and uses the result to generate a more accurate response,” Google says. “So far, we’ve seen this method improve the accuracy of Bard’s responses to computation-based word and math problems in our internal challenge datasets by approximately 30%.”

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Specifically, the Zoom IQ tools launched today are Zoom Meeting summary and Zoom Team Chat compose, which leverage both large language models from ChatGPT creators OpenAI as well as Zoom’s own large language model.

Meeting summary allows Zoom Meeting hosts to create a summary powered by the company’s own AI models, and the hosts can then share it via Zoom Team Chat and email without having to record the conversation, Zoom says.

Hosts will receive automated summaries, which can be shared with both attendees and those who didn’t attend so they can catch up on what they missed.

Team Chat compose leverages OpenAI’s technology to enable Zoom Team Chat users to draft messages based on the context of a Team Chat thread in addition to changing message tone and length as well as rephrasing responses to customize text recommendations, the company says.

To use these Zoom IQ features, customers will need to go to the Zoom admin console and opt into the free trials for each feature. As part of the opt-in, customers will also select data-sharing options with Zoom. Account admins may change this data-sharing selection at any time. Customer data will not be used to train third-party models, the company says.

Zoom is working on several other AI-powered Zoom IQ features, including email compose, Zoom Team Chat thread summaries, meeting queries, whiteboard draft and whiteboard synthesize.

According to Zoom, its federated approach to AI leverages its own proprietary large language AI models, those from leading AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, and select customers’ own models.

Zoom wants that flexibility to incorporate multiple types of models to provide the most value for its customers’ diverse needs.

“With the introduction of these new capabilities in Zoom IQ, an incredible generative AI assistant, teams can further enhance their productivity for everyday tasks, freeing up more time for creative work and expanding collaboration,” said Smita Hashim, chief product officer at Zoom. “There is no one-size-fits-all approach to large language models, and with Zoom’s federated approach to AI, we are able to bring powerful capabilities to our customers and users through Zoom’s own models as well as our partners’ models.”

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According to the Austin, Texas-based cybersecurity giant, Charlotte AI lets customers ask natural language questions and receive answers from the Falcon platform, enabling anyone from the IT helpdesk to CIOs and CISOs ask questions to help secure their organizations.

CrowdStrike’s cybersecurity generative AI assistant

CrowdStrike says Charlotte AI initially addresses three main use cases: democratizing cybersecurity and giving every user the same capabilities, elevating IT and security productivity with AI-powered threat hunting, and automating repetitive tasks like data collection, extraction and detection.

Users can ask Charlotte AI questions such as “What is our risk level against the latest Microsoft vulnerability?” to directly gain actionable insights to inform decision-making and accelerating time to response.

Like other generative AI applications, Charlotte AI will also help level the playing field and give less experienced IT and security professionals the ability to make better decisions faster, essentially narrowing the cybersecurity skills gap and reducing response time.

According to CrowdStrike, Charlotte AI will leverage CrowdStrike’s data, including the trillions of security events captured in the CrowdStrike Threat Graph, asset telemetry from across users, devices, cloud workloads and the company’s threat intelligence research.

In addition, Charlotte AI will benefit from “a continuous, human feedback loop” from Across CrowdStrike Falcon OverWatch managed threat hunting, CrowdStrike Falcon® Complete managed detection and response, CrowdStrike Services, and CrowdStrike Intelligence.

In a statement, CrowdStrike President Mike Sentonas said CrowdStrike has pioneered the use of AI in cybersecurity to identify malicious behavior and combat advanced attacks. Charlotte AI is the next innovation that will help users of all skill levels improve their ability to stop cyberattacks and reduce complexity, he adds.

“Our approach has always been rooted in the belief that the combination of AI and human intelligence together will transform cybersecurity,” Sentonas said. “We believe our continuous feedback loop on human-validated content is critical, and because of this, no other vendor will be able to match the security and business outcomes of CrowdStrike’s approach to generative AI.”

Charlotte AI in action

In a blog post, CrowdStrike lists several examples of questions users can ask, including:

• “Do we have vulnerabilities involving Microsoft Outlook?”
• “What are the biggest risks facing our business critical assets?”
• “Are we protected against the Log4j vulnerability? Where are we at risk?”
• “Which threat actors target us?”
• “What are the critical vulnerabilities being exploited by these adversaries?”
• “Can you sweep my endpoint estate for any IOCs you found?”
• “What are the top recommended remediation actions for the impacted endpoints?”

Other questions can prompt Charlotte AI to find malicious activity, such as lateral movement involving Windows hosts, the company says.

CrowdStrike, AWS AI partnership

The private preview of Charlotte AI came a day before CrowdStrike and AWS announced that the companies are working on new generative AI applications to help companies accelerate their cloud, security and AI journeys.

CrowdStrike will be leveraging new generative AI applications of Amazon Bedrock, a fully managed service that makes foundational models from leading AI startups and Amazon available via an API, to help customers adopt advanced Falcon Platform search, reporting and automation, the companies say.

In fact, Amazon Bedrock was used to accelerate development of Charlotte AI, according to CrowdStrike.

In addition, the companies are also working on solutions to help keep customers safe across a range of AI and ML services as generative AI rapidly transforms the tech industry.

According to CrowdStrike, the company is extending the protection of CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security to AWS AI/ML services by providing native integrations designed to further prevent, identify and remediate security risks associated with the adoption of AI/ML.

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The Build conference comes as Microsoft becomes fully invested in Copilot, AI and Windows 11, with much of the announcements spanning across those product categories.

Windows Copilot for Windows 11

Microsoft has already unveiled Microsoft 365 Copilot to help workers be more productive while using Microsoft’s productivity tools such as Word, PowerPoint, Outlook and more. Now, the company is launching Windows Copilot, available in preview next month, which Microsoft calls the first PC platform to provide centralized AI assistance for users.

This comes along with Bing Chat and first- and third-party plugins to help users create complex projects and collaborate more efficiently across multiple applications. Windows Copilot, essentially a virtual assistant, can be invoked from the taskbar and will stay consistent across apps, programs and windows, Microsoft says.

In a blog, Panos Panay, Microsoft’s chief product officer of Windows and devices, says Windows Copilot makes every user a power user.

“The things you love about Windows – copy/paste, Snap Assist, Snipping Tool, personalization – they are all right there for you, along with every other feature on the platform, and they only get better with Windows Copilot,” Panay writes. “For example, you can not only copy and paste, but also ask Windows Copilot to rewrite, summarize or explain your content.”

Similar to ChatGPT, Bing Chat and other chatbots driven by large language models (LLMs), Copilot can be asked a range of questions.

Since the tool was announced during the Build developer conference, Microsoft says Windows Copilot gives developers new ways to reach and innovate for shared customers.

“We welcome you to be part of the Windows Copilot journey by continuing to invest in Bing and ChatGPT plugins so your investments will carry forward to Windows Copilot,” Panay writes.

Bringing the new Bing to ChatGPT, plugins

Microsoft is also bringing its new Bing to ChatGPT to act as the default search experience, giving ChatGPT users access to Bing’s search engine which will be built-in to provide additional information from the web.

This makes ChatGPT answers grounded by search and web data, with citations. ChatGPT Plus subscribers will first get access, and it will be rolling out to free users “soon” by enabling a plugin with brings Bing to ChatGPT, Microsoft says.

Additionally, Microsoft and ChatGPT creators OpenAI are making it possible for developers to use one platform to build and submit plugins that work across both consumer and business surfaces, including ChatGPT, Bing, Dynamics 365 Copilot, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and Windows Copilot.

As part of the shared platform, Bing is adding to its support for plugins by adding several others to the Bing ecosystem.

With Microsoft launching Windows Copilot and essentially bringing Bing Chat to Windows 11 in a “more robust way,” Microsoft says Windows Copilot and Bing Chat enable those plugins to be enhanced through applications on Windows.

Microsoft says it is also natively integrating the common plugin platform into Microsoft Edge.

Microsoft Fabric

Also as part of Microsoft’s announcements is Microsoft Fabric, a new unified platform for analytics that includes data engineering, data integration, data warehousing, data science, real-time analytics, applied observability and business intelligence connected to a single data repository called OneLake, the company says.

According to Microsoft, Fabric enables customers of all technical levels to experience capabilities in a single, unified experience. It is infused with Azure OpenAI Service at every layer to help customers unlock the full potential of their data, enabling developers to leverage the power of generative AI to find insights in their data.

Fabric also incldues Copilot, allowing customers to use conversational language to create dataflows and pipelines, generate code and entire functions, build machine learning models or visualize results, Microsoft says.

Other developer tools

Microsoft also announced Hybrid AI loop to support AI development across platform, and across Azure to client with new silicon support from AMD, Intel, Nvidia and Qualcomm. This builds on Hybrid Loop, which Microsoft launched at last year’s Build conference to enable hybrid AI scenarios across Azure and client devices.

Microsoft also announced Dev Home, which it calls a new Windows 11 experience designed to help developers be more productive and streamline workflows. The preview is available in the Microsoft Store now.

Read Microsoft’s blog for the full list of new developer tools.

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According to a study from enterprise automation software firm UiPath, employees largely view AI as a tool to help them do their jobs and relieve burnout as they are asking to do more with less.

Specifically, 60% of respondents to a UiPath survey say AI and automation can address burnout and job fulfillment, and 57% of employees view employers that use automation to help support employees and modernize operations more favorably that those that don’t leverage AI.

The New York City-based firm says 28% of employees report being asked to more work with less support as organizations reduce headcount in response to a looming economic recession. That is leading to 29% of workers globally reporting feelings of burnout.

Those feelings of burnout are felt more in younger generations, as 41% of Gen Z respondents and 34% of Millennial respondents reported burnout, compared to just 25% of Gen Xers and 16% of Baby Boomers. With those younger generations set to replace older generations and become business leaders, burnout levels could rise.

While companies like Microsoft, Google, UiPath and others have been presenting AI tools as a solution to burnout and helping workers be more efficient, some organizations have blatantly said that they plan to replace some jobs with AI, including BT and IBM.

Nevertheless, 60% of respondents say AI will help reduce burnout and help them do their jobs better, with younger generations reporting higher levels (69% of Gen Zers and 63% of Millennials, 51% of Gen Xers compared to 44% of Baby Boomers) of reception to AI-powered automation.

When asked what they want to change with the help of automation, 34% of respondents said they wanted more flexibility in their work environment, 32% said they want more time to learn new skills, and 27% said they want more time during the day to focus on critical tasks.

When it comes down to specifics, employees want automation tools to help with largely technical tasks, including analyzing data (52%); inputting data/creating datasets (50%); resolving IT/technical issues (49%); and running reports (48%), UiPath’s report finds.

In a statement, UiPath’s chief people officer Brigette McInnis-Day said workplace disruption and economic factors don’t have to result in employee burnout, and using AI and automation for some of that work can help.

“Businesses that deploy AI in an open, flexible, and enterprise-ready way are best positioned to attract and retain the types of employees that will help them thrive in an automation-first world,” McInnis-Day says. “Automation is a key differentiator for companies to attract and retain by empowering employees and driving engagement.”

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Zoom is first launching this Claude AI chatbot integration with Zoom Contact Center, but has plans to bring it throughout the entire platform, including Chat, Meetings, Phone, Whiteboard and Zoom IQ.

According to Zoom, the videoconferencing and collaboration giant has a “federated approach” to AI that leverages its own proprietary AI models along with those from leading AI companies–such as Anthropic–and select customers’ models.

Zoom says this gives the company the flexibility to incorporate multiple types of models to provide the most value for customers’ diverse needs and allow them to be customized to perform better for a customer based on their specific needs.

According to Zoom, it plans to incorporate Claude and Anthropic AI throughout its Zoom Contact Center suite of tools, which includes Zoom Virtual Agent, Zoom Contact Center and Zoom Workforce Management.

The intended result is to elevate the quality of customer experiences through better self-service and the ability to accurately understand customer intent. Zoom says the AI-enabled suite of contact center solutions will help guide customers to the best resolutions and surface insights that managers can use to coach agents and improve productivity.

Zoom also plans to use Claude and other AI tools to provide the right resources to contact center agents to help improve customer service.

The San Jose, Calif.-based firm says the integrations come with an investment into Anthropic and Claude for an undisclosed amount.

Notably, Anthropic is also backed by a sizable investment from Google, with the news of the relationship coming in February as Microsoft began heavily investing in ChatGPT creator OpenAI and integrating the AI firm’s large language models into its own products and with the goal of integrating AI assistants and other tools across the Microsoft 365 suite.

In a statement, Smita Hashim, Zoom’s chief product officer, calls Anthropic’s Constitutional AI model “primed to provide safe and responsible integrations” for Zoom’s next-generation innovations.

“With Claude guiding agents toward trustworthy resolutions and powering self-service for end-users, companies will be able to take customer relationships to another level,” Hasim said. “Partnering with Anthropic also furthers our commitment to providing customers with our federated approach to AI, optimized to deliver outstanding customer experience outcomes. Additionally, with our investment, we are advancing leading-edge companies like Anthropic and helping to drive innovation in the Zoom ecosystem and beyond.”

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According to the Austin, Texas-based provider of IT management tools, the new intelligent solutions and Service Desk AI virtual agent aims to help users solve IT issues on their own so IT professionals can focus on more complex issues.

Specifically, the Service Desk AI virtual agent can answer user questions and support troubleshooting, while continually learning based on interactions with users and adapting over time to provide helpful and relevant information. Meanwhile, guided incident response will help agents more effectively resolve complex issues.

Based on the company’s testing with customers, the new Service Desk AI features enabled IT teams to reduce ticket resolution time by 24% and save an average of 23 hours per week. Surveyed Service Desk customers reported a reduction in downtime of 21% on average and a 24% average increase in progress toward achieving service-level agreements, according to the company.

The new virtual agent adds to the company’s already easy-to-use Service Desk solution, which currently includes automated ticket-routing and AI-powered smart suggestions.

Bringing SolarWinds AI features to other departments

According to SolarWinds, organizations can customize SolarWinds Service Desk to provide efficient and intelligent ticket management systems and service request workflows for other business groups beyond the IT department, including human resources, legal, finance, sales marketing and others. Doing so can help those other departments deliver better service to colleagues.

SolarWinds later this year will launch a new enterprise service management solution designed to allow multiple departments within a single organization to have their own service portal, ticketing system and service catalog within one platform to allow for better cross-department workflows with keeping data segregated.

The new AI-powered ITSM upgrades come after SolarWinds released cloud-based and hybrid observability solutions and a new partner program in the past year. By investing in the AI-powered SolarWinds Platform, the company says it is blending observability and service management to consistently deliver simple and secure solutions for IT Ops, DevOps, SecOps, and CloudOps professionals.

The new virtual agent adds to the company’s already easy-to-use Service Desk solution, which currently includes automated ticket-routing and AI-powered smart suggestions.

In a statement, Cullen Childress, GVP of product management at SolarWinds, said IT management has become increasingly complex with the rapid pace of digital innovation and migration to the cloud in the last few years.

“Our ITSM solutions are a significant focus we’re investing in,” Childress said. “This includes Service Desk, which enables teams to focus more on important business priorities rather than mundane, time-consuming tasks. By leveraging advanced AI and powerful automation, SolarWinds makes users more productive, supports agents more efficiently, and helps ensure companies are more successful.”

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The announcement came during the company’s annual Google I/O developer conference at which Google also announced new features for its generative AI chatbot Bard. Duet AI appears to be Google’s version of Microsoft’s generative AI assistant in Microsoft 365 which it calls Copilot.

Duet AI in Gmail, Slides, Sheets

According to Google, Duet AI already works behind the scenes in Workplace to help users refine emails and documents, and the company is now bringing the experience to Gmail on mobile to help users draft responses on the go.

The company’s initial launch of mobile will be fast-followed by contextual assistance that allows users to create professional replies that automatically fill in names and other relevant information.

This is in addion to Duet AI, Google says a new “Help me write” feature will be rolling out that allows users to leverage generative AI to help them write emails by typing a prompt of what they want to create a full draft of an email.

In Slides, Duet AI will help users generate images with a few words and generate an original visual to help support the text on the slides.

In Google Sheets, Duet AI will help users analyze and act on data with automated data classification and the creation of custom plans, the company says.

Google says classification tools understand the context of data in a cell and can assign a label to it to help eliminate manual data entry.

Also included in Sheets is a new “help me organize” capability that automatically creates custom plans for tasks, projects or any activity users want to track or manage. All they have to do is describe what they want to accomplish and Sheets will generate a plan for them, Google says.

Duet AI in Google Docs

In Docs, Duet AI will help users write content and include smart chips for information like location and status, as well as variables for details that users want to customize such. This adds to the “@ mention” feature in Docs that allows users to stay focused and collaborate in the document.

In addition, Google says it is adding new languages and bringing more capabilities to help with proofreading, tone and style in a new proofread suggestion pane that offers suggestions.

Duet AI in Google Meet

Like how Microsoft plans to bring Copilot into Microsoft Teams, Google wants to weave Duet AI into Google Meet, starting with the ability to generate unique backgrounds for video calls.

Test these features in Google Labs

To help users and organizations test out these new tools, Google is launching the waitlist for Google Labs and offering a limited number of spots to try out new Ai features in Search, Workspace, Project Tailwind and MusicLM.

Learn more about Google Labs and those projects in this short blog post.

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According to Google, the Mountain View, Calif.-based tech giant’s updates include expanding access to Bard, bringing new visual capabilities to its AI-powered chatbot Bard, improving the generative AI’s coding capabilities and adding new productivity integrations.

Google Expanding Bard access

Purportedly in response to ChatGPT and competitor Microsoft’s massive investment in OpenAI, Google announced its large language model-powered chatbot Bard in February and launched it in March in a preview. Now, the company is removing the waitlist and opening up Bard to over 180 countries and territories, with more coming soon, Google says.

New Google Bard visual tools

In addition to new languages, Google is soon adding new visual interactions to Bard that will allow users to ask questions and get images in response to help explain the text. Also, users can use images in their own prompts via a Google Lens integration that will allow Bard to analyze the photo and include analysis in its response.

Google Bard Developer tools

Based on feedback from developers, Google is also introducing new features designed to make Bard a better coding assistant. With coding one of the main use cases of these early days of generative AI, Google hopes to strengthen Bard’s capabilities with more precise source citations, a dark theme and “export” button.

New Google Bard integrations

According to Google, export actions allow users to take Bard’s email and document drafts and move them directly into Gmail and Docs, respectively.

Source citations are rolling out next week, and the “export” button is listed as “coming soon.” Meanwhile, dark theme is now available.

The company also says it is working on integrating popular Google tools such as Docs, Drive, Gmail, Maps and more directly into Bard, and is also adding integrations with third-party software from Adobe, Kayak, OpenTable, ZipRecruiter, Instacart and more.

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