Google’s Bard expands to Europe, Brazil

Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is expanding its artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, Bard, in Europe and Brazil, the biggest expansion since its launch in February, the company announced on Thursday.

Google also added new features to Bard, applying globally.

“Starting today, you can collaborate with Bard in over 40 languages, including Arabic, Chinese, German, Hindi and Spanish. Sometimes hearing something out loud can help you approach your idea in a different way,” said Google’s senior product director, Jack Krawczyk.

Users can change the tone and style of Bard’s responses to simple, long, short, professional, or casual, they can also pin or rename conversations, export code to more places, and use images in prompts.

Users have the option to opt out of their data being collected, said Amar Subramanya, engineering vice president of Bard.

Bard’s launch was hindered in Europe by local privacy regulators, for which Google met with the watchdogs to reassure them on issues relating to transparency, choice, and control.

Google faced a class action in the US for allegedly misusing users’ personal information to train its AI system.