What you need to know
- Google wants you to let it know what features you'd like to see added to its Bard chatbot in 2024.
- Bard, and Google's artificial intelligence efforts as a whole, made positive strides in late 2023 — but still lag behind OpenAI and Microsoft offerings.
- User input is starting to roll in, with Google Assistant integration, a mobile app, and image generation at the top of the list of requested features.
One of Google's biggest releases of the last year was Bard, the artificial intelligence chatbot competing with OpenAI's ChatGPT and Microsoft's Copilot. As we enter 2024, Google wants your help figuring out where to take Bard from here.
In a post on the Google Bard community on Reddit, Chris Gorgolewski asked for users to share their top feature requests they'd like to see in Bard this year. Gorgolewski is a product manager on the Bard team at Google, and replied to a few comments from Redditors on his original post. Though user feedback is still rolling in, there are already a few feature requests that have seen massive support from the Bard community.
At the top of the list was Google Assistant with Bard, a feature that has already been announced by Google. Integrating the power of Bard's artificial intelligence features with Google Assistant could be a game-changer for voice assistants. Google announced it was testing Google Assistant with Bard in October last year, but not much has come of that since then. Gorgolewski reaffirmed in a reply that Google Assistant with Bard is coming, though.
Next up was a request for Google's new Gemini Ultra AI model to be used in Bard, and that's another feature confirmed to be on the way. The company recently added the Gemini Pro model to Bard, and claims that it outperforms OpenAI's GPT 3.5 in a few key benchmarks. But OpenAI already has GPT 4 out, and Bard is still lagging behind. Google said it will bring Gemini Ultra to its chatbot via a version called Bard Advanced in early 2024, so we can expect to see it soon.
Other users mentioned features like a dedicated mobile app and image generation tools. Surprisingly, Bard is still only accessible on the web.
On a more serious note, some users called out Google's approach to moderating Bard. "Tone down unnecessary censorship unless straight up illegal or something," said u/NoshoRed in a reply. "Let the user decide what they want to or not want to see."
Users hoping to see a less-restricted version of Bard might be disappointed. Google recently announced plans to limit Bard's responses related to political elections, and appears committed to moderating Bard.
You can share your wishlist for Bard in 2024 under Gorgolewski's post on Reddit, and it might just influence Google's plans this year.
