Rosalind Evans
Google announced the expansion of its AI-driven chatbot Bard to Europe and Brazil, making the service accessible to hundreds of millions of additional users.
To compete with Microsoft’s use of OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT in its Bing search engine, Google is introducing further enhancements to Bard. This move forms part of their strategy to capitalize on the burgeoning interest in generative AI technologies globally.
Google initially launched Bard in February, but regulatory checks on compliance with the European Union’s stringent privacy regulations caused a delay in its planned rollout the following month.
The tech giant mentioned having “actively engaged with experts, policymakers, and privacy regulators” during this process.
The Irish Data Protection Commission, Google’s primary EU privacy overseer, submitted a comprehensive questionnaire to the company for additional clarification. Consequently, Google made a series of modifications before its European launch, explicitly improving transparency and user controls, as stated by the watchdog.
A blog post by Google outlined the enhancements, indicating that Bard now supports more than 40 languages, including Arabic, Chinese, German, Hindi, and Spanish.
Google also mentioned that users can now customize the tone and style of Bard’s responses, request it to read out answers, and English-speaking users can upload images along with queries for Bard to process. The latter feature could prove beneficial for getting accurate word pronunciation or listening to a poem or script.
AI chatbots like Bard have impressed users with their capacity to generate human-like text, image, or video responses to queries. Such progress in technology has led companies to exploit these innovations swiftly.
Elon Musk, a billionaire with known concerns about AI’s potential existential risk to humanity, launched his own AI company this week. The firm has set an ambitious and somewhat ambiguous objective of comprehending the universe.
However, new AI systems have also stirred concerns about data privacy, copyright violation, and the dissemination of misinformation. Italian regulators temporarily halted OpenAI’s ChatGPT due to privacy issues, and the European Union is readying to implement the world’s first comprehensive AI regulations.
As technology continues to evolve and AI becomes more integrated into daily life, it’s clear that the success of companies like Google will depend on their ability to navigate a complex landscape of opportunities and challenges. Despite regulatory hurdles and concerns about data privacy and misinformation, the roll-out of Google’s AI chatbot Bard to new markets represents a significant step forward in the company’s efforts to harness the power of AI while also striving to ensure its technology respects user privacy and provides valuable tools for users worldwide.
