Google launches its Bard chatbot in Europe with a heap of new features as the AI arms race heats up

Google has announced that its Bard AI chatbot is now accessible in several new regions, including Europe and Brazil. This significant expansion positions Bard to serve users across most of the globe, supporting a range of widely spoken languages, as stated by the company. In a bid to keep pace with competitors like OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google has intensified its development efforts for Bard. Initially, the rollout was delayed in Europe due to concerns from the EU's leading data protection authority regarding compliance with stringent data-protection regulations. In a recent blog post, Bard's product lead Jack Krawczyk and engineering vice president Amarnag Subramanya emphasized that this update marks Bard's most extensive expansion yet. The chatbot now accommodates additional languages, including Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, German, and Hindi. Among the newly introduced features, Bard can now read its responses aloud, a capability available in 40 languages. Users can also customize the tone of Bard's replies, choosing from options such as simple, long, short, professional, or casual, although this customization is currently limited to English. Furthermore, users have the ability to pin and revisit prompts, allowing them to continue conversations without starting anew. Bard can also analyze uploaded images, enabling users to request tasks like generating humorous captions for pictures. Meanwhile, Google's DeepMind team is hard at work on an advanced large-language model named Gemini, which has the potential to enhance Bard and other generative AI products. As the competition in the AI landscape heats up, other players like Anthropic have also introduced new models, such as their chatbot Claude 2, signaling a rapidly evolving market.