Google has launched the Bard chatbot in Romania and a few dozen other European countries, eight months after ChatGPT showed the general public how interesting the chatbot is. You can ask Bard in Romanian what to make for dinner, you can ask him to summarize a text for you, help you write an email or you can “ask” him to advise you on various topics.

Google Bard – where to find it and some ideas for questions

Bard is available at bard.google.com, on desktop or mobile, and can be interacted with using text or voice.

Bard generates a variety of creative text formats in Romanian — poems, code, email, messages, etc. — and will answer questions “comprehensively and informatively,” Google says. Some options, which you can read about below, are currently only available in English.

“Bard is a large-scale language model, also known as a conversational AI or chatbot. It is able to communicate and generate text in a human-like manner in response to a wide range of queries and questions,” Google says.

For example, it can respond to a request like “Recommend a dish with the following ingredients: chickpeas, peppers and green beans”, “Watch the following video briefly” or “Give me a summary of the following text”, “Give me some tips to help me read more books this year” or “Help me write a text about the most famous Romanian writers abroad”.

Bard Google – how to communicate with him

Among the Celts, a bard was a poet who composed and recited military and religious songs, and the most famous “bard” in Romanian literature is the “bard of Mircesti”, Vasile Alexandri. “Bard” also means “poet” or “rhapsode” in English, and a Google official explains that this name was chosen on purpose, because Bard can be a kind of personal narrator, encouraging you to use your mind and learn more.

Bard can also be interacted with by voice and users can listen to the responses received, the option is also available in Romanian. This feature is especially useful when you need to hear the correct pronunciation of a word or phrase.

Interestingly, users can change the tone and style in which the Bard responds with five options: simple, long, short, professional and casual. This option is currently only available in English, but will soon be extended to other languages.

Bard is an evolving solution that can help users “be more productive and creative,” Google says.

According to Google, Bard uses up-to-date information from the web to provide fresh, “high-quality” answers. This is different from ChatGPT, which does not have access to new information from the Internet.

Google says Bard can help programmers and developers with code creation, analysis and explanations. Python code can be exported to Google Colab and more recently to Replit.

Also, starting Thursday, Bard uses Google Lens capabilities to interact with images. Users can upload images to the commands they type, and Bard will analyze them and respond, whether it’s additional information about the image or inspiration for accompanying text. This feature is available in English and will soon be extended to other languages.

Google says that in many cases, the user can choose from several response options from which to continue the conversation with Bard. Different options are available in the options in the upper right corner of the interface.

Although Bard is independent of Google Search, it can also be used to search Google for more information from many sources. The Bard user has a “Google it” button at his disposal, which opens a search on the topic specified in the conversation with Bard.

An experiment that can also produce errors

It is clear that Google will “hallucinate”, that is, it will also give false answers that it will “gather” from the web. The company knows this is going to happen, and they know people will ask all kinds of crazy things to test everything the “bard” can do.

Google insists that Bard is an “early-stage experiment” and is being refined based on user feedback.

The company explains that this AI system has built-in controls, such as limiting the number of lines in dialogue with Bard, to keep interactions useful and relevant.

To provide “feedback” to the Bard’s answer, the user can provide an upvote or downvote, as well as additional context for that vote.

On Thursday, Google announced Bard’s largest expansion yet, covering all 27 countries in the European Union, as well as more than 40 languages, including Spanish, German, Arabic, Chinese and Hindi. Bard is currently launched in most countries around the world and in the most widely spoken languages ​​around the world.

Bard, dates and later release in Europe

Google announced the launch of Bard in February, and the chatbot has been available since March as a small experiment in the US and UK, and since May it has reached the general public in several countries. In June, the launch was announced everywhere but in the EU, as the US group had yet to provide European authorities with information on how user data is managed and protected.

Google says it is actively working with experts, regulators and public policy experts, including data protection authorities, to launch Bard in Europe to understand their concerns and hear from all sides.

By default, Google stores activity in Bard for up to 18 months, but the user can change this interval to a period from 3 to 36 months. This option can also be turned off completely, and Bard activities can be easily removed from g.co/bard/myactivity.

Google says it has taken steps to responsibly handle the personal information of Bard users. When interacting with Bard, Google collects information such as conversations, location, responses, and usage information to improve and develop products, services, and machine learning technologies.