What you need to know
- Google Bard now shows images as part of its responses.
- Tapping on an image redirects you to the source's website.
- In the future, you'll be able to submit an image to the AI chatbot and make a request for it.
Google Bard has gained a much-needed update that makes its responses to prompts a lot easier to visualize and understand.
The search giant initially announced at Google I/O earlier this month that Google Bard would be able to include images in its responses. Google is now making good on that promise, with Bard adding visuals to its answers when appropriate.
When asked about travel options, for example, the AI chatbot will show a list of places that it thinks you'll want to visit, along with images to give you a better idea of those tourist destinations. Each image includes a mention of the source, and tapping on it redirects you to the website where it was taken.
Bard sources the images from Google Search, and you can ask the chatbot to only display images in its responses. For the time being, only English responses are accompanied by images, though Google should expand support to other languages in the future.
"Images can help you communicate your ideas more effectively," Bard's Experiment updates page states. "They can bring concepts to life, make recommendations more persuasive, and enhance responses when you ask for visual information."
The new feature is a huge improvement to Google's ChatGPT rival, seeing as images can add value to answers. In most cases, an image can provide more information than a text answer can. For example, if a user is asking for information about a product, an image of the item can be much more helpful than a text description.
In addition to responding with images, we can count on Bard picking up more capabilities around processing images in the future. Google plans to allow users to submit an image and make specific requests, like creating a caption. Bard will rely on the power of Google Lens to analyze user-submitted images and return a relevant response.
All of these capabilities are available on Bard's desktop and mobile web version. By making answers more understandable and engaging, images can help Google's AI chatbot provide a better experience to users.
