News Analysis
Last week, Google launched Bard Extensions to connect its conversational generative artificial intelligence chatbot with Google apps — including Gmail, Docs and Drive — and give users access to both the "world’s information" and their personal information in one place, with Bard as their “creative partner.”
Some say these extensions provide a range of potential use cases for workers to improve productivity and collaboration. So, Reworked spoke with these workplace leaders to get their projections on the effects of Bard Extensions on the digital workplace. Here’s what they had to say.
What Are Bard Extensions?
It’s important to first explain the key details of Bard Extensions. In a nutshell, they enable users to find relevant information from any of their Google apps, even if the information they need is distributed across multiple apps, Google explained in a blog post.
Google’s product update page on Bard shows the integration is designed to help users collaborate with Bard, summarize and answer questions across their personal content.
Of course, there is help. Google also offers Workspace admins instructions on how to enable Bard access for users. But as part of the Bard update, users can also chat with each other through a public link to ask Bard additional questions. The gist, according to Google, is to help users collaborate and create with each other by building on ideas.
"Creativity is often inspired by the work of others, and the more ideas we have to work with, the more likely we are to come up with something truly innovative," the Google product update page reads.
Related Article: How Smaller Digital Workplace Vendors Are Integrating Generative AI
Surfacing Information
So, are the new extensions promising for the workplace?
In an interview with Reworked, Alex Wilson, VP of contextual coaching at employee engagement firm Cloverleaf, said most of the discussion on deeply integrated large language models (LLMs), such as Bard, is focused around productivity and ease of surfacing information. And, in his view, “the efficiencies offered are certainly noteworthy,” Wilson said.
“However, there is a more subtle change that these tools provide around shifting how employees collaborate and, more specifically, how they communicate.”
Wilson said he’s seeing that when you equip people with a common language to talk through the problems they’re facing, they’re better equipped to solve problems together, which leads to a “different kind of productivity rooted in effective collaboration.”
Wilson believes Bard's integration with the Workspace information within an organization will help employees more quickly find the right information that gives them the specific language to more effectively communicate their ideas and concepts to teammates.
“It's not just the ability of a single individual to find a document or get an answer faster, but rather to find that language to communicate that to their colleagues that will build more effective teams, which is where work really happens,” Wilson said.
For instance, he said, if an employee is trying to pitch a new product to their leadership team, they’ll need to use the language articulated in company strategy documents that capture the investment strategy pillars, reference business KPIs the product will drive and reference and incorporate anecdotes from customer interviews.
With the Workspace integration, Bard can become invaluable as a tool to quickly surface such information embedded in different documents across a company’s repository. And it can then be used as a writing aid to incorporate the language of those resources, he said.
“The information surfacing piece is certainly more efficient and going to be a productivity booster for the author, but really where the value comes from is getting to the right language faster,” Wilson said.
Related Article: How to Develop an Internal Content Ecosystem
A Boost of Creativity — and Collaboration
Mike King, CMO at AI prompt manager AIPRM, said Google has been playing catch up on the generative AI train, and it’s clear that with these extensions, “they are starting — through the power of their ecosystem — to counteract what Bing and OpenAI are doing on their side.”
For example, King said, with the Workspace integration, if a marketing manager is working on a new campaign and needs to gather internal information from a variety of Workspace apps, they can use Bard to summarize the key points from those sources as well as link to the original sources to refer back to them. They can then share the Bard chat with a team member to review the information and add their thoughts, discussing the campaign strategy and brainstorming ideas.
Bard can make it easy for the marketing manager and their team to collaborate on the campaign, and it saves them time by eliminating the need to switch between different apps and “sift through everything manually,” he said.
Ashu Dubey, co-founder and CEO of generative AI-based support company Gleen, added that Bard connecting to various sources of Workspace information is helpful for collaboration in the workplace and an efficient way for teams to work cross-functionally.
For instance, Dubey said, with the Workspace integration, a marketing team can work with a design team to build campaigns and materials, using Bard to find internal Workspace documents and answer questions.
“This will cut down on the amount of time businesses spend with document sharing and collaboration," he said.
Related Article: Better Together: How Creatives Can Benefit From Generative AI
Privacy Matters: Training the Chatbot
One of the risks of generative AI is the privacy and confidentiality of the information submitted by its users.
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Google says that when users connect Bard to their Workspace Gmail, Docs or Drive through Bard Extensions, their content isn't used to train Bard, isn’t used by Bard to show ads or isn’t seen by a human reviewer. Users are in control of their privacy settings when using the extensions — and can even turn them off at will.
There's currently no mention of Bard in Google’s digital materials on its assistant Duet AI — as well as no mention of Duet AI in Google’s digital materials on its conversational AI chatbot Bard. Google says Duet AI is specially trained on operating in the Google Cloud environment, including within Workspace and for back-end work, such as software development and data science.
