Google’s AI Assistant Can Help Read Your Emails, Plan Trips

Google connected the dots by linking ts gen AI engine, Bard, and its suite of web tools to create a powerful virtual assistant.

With Bard Extensions, users can interact with the tool to utilize both personal and public data.

Users can ask Bard to search and find emails, summarize emails, and find specific details that can be used as part of an ongoing conversation.

The company used an example where a user asked the tool to find a date for a trip that was specified in a personal email.

As a follow up the user can then ask Bard to find flights and hotels for those dates.

Users can ask Bard to create directions in Google Docs and show examples by embedding YouTube videos.

Google’s strategy of utilizing its most popular applications to lead the way in the usage of Bard makes adding AI functionality simple for even basic users.

But this new addition comes many months after Microsoft announced the launch of AI-powered Copilots for Office.

Copilots add an AI button into Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and Outlook.

Users can ask the gen AI chatbot to draft emails, and Word docs, and layout Powerpoints with a simple prompt.

There are more complex features such as asking Copilot to summarize an email to save the user time in digging through long chain emails.

Copilot in Excel allows users to prompt the Gen AI engine with what you want the cells to do allowing the AI engine to suggest formulas to accomplish the task.

As with all AI, allowing the engine access to private data is a risk.

But both Google and Microsoft promise that user data will not be utilized to train future versions of their AI tools.

And Google went one step further with a Double Check feature that allows users to double-check a fact provided by the AI by tying in a Google search to fund a secondary source.