Your close and loved ones may claim to remember all that matters to you, but surely they’ve forgotten a minor thing or two, like one of your birthdays through the years. Or serving you oysters, even though you have a shellfish allergy. Remembering every little thing can be challenging and since we’re humans, it’s impossible to do it with a 100% success rate.But what if you’re not human at all? What if you’re Google Bard? The ChatGPT rival now gets its own “Memory” – a feature that will help it remember key details about the ones that are interacting with it (via Android Police).
The AI chatbot’s “Memory” option can be toggled on or off, so if you count James Cameron’s Terminator more as a documentary than fiction, maybe keep that “Off”.
Everyone else will get to try what it’s like to chat with a machine that knows you (to an extent) and doesn’t begin every conversation from scratch. Until now, two separate users should get more or less the exact same answer to the same question. With the “Memory” option turned on, they should get different answers, if they have interacted extensively enough with Bard prior to that.
The option is still not available for everyone, so apparently Google is rolling it out gradually. There’s a hint at what it might look like and Google says: “Now, Bard can remember details across conversations, and use them to improve responses”. There’s the option to manually add a memory that you want Bard to remember. For example – “I try to avoid eating meat”, “I have 2 kids”, and “Please give shorter responses”.
This looks like a filter that Bard should take into consideration and not suggest you rent a two-seater Lamborghini for your next family trip in Europe (you have two kids, so better check out the mini-vans).
That’s not the first time Bard gets personal and tries to know users better. In mid-September, Google announced the launch of Bard Extensions, which offer integration with other Google tools, like Gmail, Docs, Drive, Google Maps, YouTube, and Google Flights.
When these Bard Extensions are enabled, the AI chatbot uses information from the aforementioned platforms and services to better answer your questions. So, if you’ve received several emails from your kid’s school but you haven’t got the time to carefully read them, you can ask Bard to scan and summarize them for you.
