Can't Find an Email? Google Bard Can Now Search Through Your Messages

pcmag.com:

Google's Bard AI chatbot has a new trick. Bard Extensions can now rifle through your digital files (Gmail, Docs, Drive) to find specific pieces of information, and then build on it with more information from the web.

Google gives the example of planning a hiking trip. You can now ask Bard, "What dates did Erik propose in the email about the Grand Canyon hiking trip?"

It will retrieve the date from your Gmail. Then, you can ask it to show flights and hotels for those dates, which will reference Google Flights and Google Hotels. Finally, it can create a full trip itinerary and suggested packing list.

Another example: "Imagine you’re applying for a new job and using Bard to help with the process. You could ask Bard to 'Find my resume titled June 2023 from my Drive and summarize it to a short paragraph personal statement.'"

For those who want to keep AI out of their inbox, Google says extensions can be disabled at any time, though they will be enabled by default. "These extensions are built on our principles of transparency, choice, and control," Google says. "And of course, Bard requires your permission before linking to Google Workspace."

Before this update, users could export Bard's responses to Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. But this new ability mines the trove of information in those apps and incorporates personalized details into the conversation, which could be a compelling reason for Google users to choose Bard over ChatGPT, Bing Chat, or another AI competitor.

"This is the first step in a fundamentally new capability for Bard—the ability to talk to other apps and services to provide more helpful responses," Google says. "This is a very young area of AI  —we are still learning and iterating fast—but are excited to make