Google expands access to its ChatGPT competitor to over 180 countries

Google is expanding the availability of its ChatGPT competitor, Bard, with more than 180 countries getting access to the AI assistant with no waitlist.

The tech giant also announced new features for the AI, including support for Japanese and Korean, visual responses to queries, and integration with Google Services and software from its partners.

Google made the announcements during its I/O event on Wednesday, 10 May 2023.

The generative AI assistant has received a substantial upgrade thanks to Google’s new PaLM 2 — a group of foundational large language models (LLMs).

According to Google, the LLMs have enhanced math and reasoning skills and improved coding capabilities.

The tech giant is working on integrating services like Google Lens into Bard, giving users the ability to include photos and images in their prompts.

During the I/O event, Google showcased using images and photos in prompts for Bard. It used a picture of two dogs, with the text prompt: “write a funny caption about these two”.

The company’s vice president of engineering, Cathay Edwards, explained that Bard analyses the photo to identify the dog breeds and then drafts a selection of captions.

Google showcased its Lens integration with Bard by asking it to generate a funny caption for this image.

Google said it kept software developers in mind with its enhancements to Bard. It added coding collaboration features like an export button for code execution in Colab and Replit.

The AI assistant will also include citations with any code it provides.

“If Bard brings in a block of code or cites other content, just click the annotation, and Bard will underline those parts of the response and link to the source,” Google wrote in a blog post.

Like ChatGPT plugins, Bard will receive extension support in the future to allow the AI assistant to access external resources.

Such an example is Bard using an extension for Adobe Firefly. Google showed an example of generating images of unicorns for a birthday party using the Adobe Firefly extension within Bard.

The company said it received numerous requests to add a Dark Mode to Bard. Google announced that Bard now also supports a dark theme.

The announcement received the biggest round of applause from the audience at Google’s I/O keynote.

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Google expands access to its ChatGPT competitor to over 180 countries