Google has rolled out a new update for Bard, its AI-based chatbot that brings some welcome changes for web publishers.
Jack Krawczyk of Google, announced An update that includes improvements to Bard’s summarization capabilities and improvements to the visibility of source content.
These changes are intended to make Bard more useful while potentially increasing the reach and influence of original publishers.
Improvements to Summaries
Krawczyk revealed that Bard’s latest update was designed to produce shorter summaries. This is useful for users who want to get a quick theme overview.
“Starting today, we’ve tuned the model to be better at summaries — especially useful when you want to quickly get to the heart of a topic,” Krawczyk said on Twitter.
Greater visibility for source content
In a notable development for web publishers, today’s Bard update allows users to more easily identify and redirect the data source used in a response.
“We also make resources more useful. Now, for answers with sources, you’ll now be able to identify the part of the text that matches the source and jump to it easily,” explained Krawczyk.
This feature is set to increase the visibility of source content and potentially drive more traffic to the original publishers, which is a welcome benefit.
Summary
The move toward greater transparency in source attribution is also an important step in the responsible use of AI and combating disinformation.
Today’s update adds images, encoding features and extensions to Bard, following Google’s announcement at last week’s annual I/O developer conference.
In case you missed the announcement, Google has removed the waiting list for Bard and is now offering the service in more countries and languages, with more expected to be added soon.
Featured image created by author using Midjourney.