Google Bard cheat sheet: What is Bard, and how can you access it?

Bard is Google’s artificial intelligence chatbot which generates responses to user-provided natural language prompts. In response to a prompt, Bard can pull information from the internet and present a response. The large language model behind Bard delivers the response in natural language — in contrast to a standard Google search, where a result consists of a snippet of information or a list of links.

SEE: Explore how ChatGPT and other generative AI tools can help you be more productive.

Google announced Bard in February 2023 after OpenAI and Microsoft both garnered attention for AI chatbot systems. And in May 2023, Bard and related AI advancements featured prominently in Google’s I/O event.

According to Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, Bard is “an experimental conversational AI service.”

In fact, Google places the word “Experiment” next to the system’s name to show it is still a work in progress. Additionally, Google indicates that “Bard may display inaccurate or offensive information that doesn’t represent Google’s views” in a disclaimer placed below the prompt box.

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Bard’s prompt-response process can help you obtain answers faster than a standard Google search sequence.

A classic Google search requires you to enter keywords, follow links, review content, then compile the results or repeat the process with a refined keyword search string.

SEE: Check out these Google Bard search prompting tips.

With Bard, you enter a prompt, then review the response. If the response isn’t exactly what you want, you have four options:

Bard can handle all sorts of tasks, but many of the most common uses are covered by the categories of capabilities detailed below.

As a large language model, Bard can adeptly summarize text. For example, provide a link to a web page and ask Bard to summarize the contents, e.g.:

Please summarize ​​https://blog.google/technology/ai/bard-google-ai-search-updates/.

You also can suggest a specific length if you want a particular degree of brevity, such as “Please summarize in 100 words.”

Bard can compare two or more items. In many cases, when you ask Bard to compare things, the system will display some of the data in a table. For example, if you prompt Bard:

Compare a Pixel 7, Pixel 7a and Samsung Galaxy S23.

Similarly, you may ask Bard to compare web pages.

Bard may serve as a suggestion engine for products, services or activities. Enter the title of books, music or movies you like, then ask Bard to suggest others. This can be useful when you’re researching unfamiliar topics. For example, you might try:

I am interested in learning the history of machine learning. Can you recommend 10 useful and highly respected books on the topic?

When you want to learn about a topic or historical event, you can ask Bard to explain it to you. If you like, you may suggest a desired level in order to guide the system toward an explanation that may be either easier to understand or more detailed. For a general overview of a core technology that helps make Bard work, you might ask:

Can you explain the basics of how neural networks operate? Explain it to me as if I am in my first year of college.

One of the best uses of a chatbot is to gather a long list of ideas. Ask Bard to “Brainstorm ideas for…” followed by whatever topic you wish, such as a new project, promotional effort or paper. Encourage Bard to provide creative, unusual or inventive ideas for additional variety in the responses.

In April 2023, Bard added the ability to create and help debug code in more than 20 programming languages. When you ask for code, make sure to specify the programming language and describe in as much detail as possible the code you need. If the code generated doesn’t work, let Bard know what exactly went awry, and ask for a suggested fix or for help interpreting an error code.

SEE: Explore other Google Bard enhancements.

Bard can help you write, too. As with most prompts, provide as much detail about the topic, length, format (blog post, poem, essay, book report, etc.) and style as possible. If you have a rough outline of a blog post, you might include the desired points in your prompt. For this section of text, for example, you might prompt:

Using the following points as an outline, can you draft examples and explanatory text? "Bard can summarize. Bard can compare. Bard can suggest. Bard can explain. Bard can brainstorm. Bard can draft text. Bard can code (and debug). Bard can search."

The responses Bard generated were reasonable and might have required only a little editing and correction to be usable.

Google makes it easy to move Bard text elsewhere. Select the response export button to move content to either a new Google Doc or Gmail. Alternatively, select the More button (the three vertical dots), then choose Copy to place the response text on the system clipboard for pasting into any app of your choice.

Since Bard can access internet content, many conventional keyword searches will also work in Bard. Ask about current news topics, weather forecasts or pretty much any standard keyword search string. However, Bard will provide responses mostly in conventional text, sometimes supplemented with images, whereas Google search may show content in custom formats (e.g., weather forecasts often display a chart). When you seek a set of links, switch out of Bard back to a standard Google search.

Bard can get things wrong. Never rely solely on content provided in Bard responses without verification. When Bard does provide an inaccurate, misleading or inappropriate response, select the thumbs down icon to convey to the system that it provided a bad response. Remember, Bard is an experiment.

At launch in March 2023, Google limited Bard access via a waitlist to people with personal Google accounts. In early May 2023, Google eliminated the waitlist and made Bard more widely available.

To access Bard, go to https://bard.google.com in a web browser, and sign in with a Google account (Figure A).

Figure A

If your account is managed by a Google Workspace administrator, such as an account for work or school, the administrator may adjust settings to either allow or prevent access to Bard. Check with your administrator, should you have any questions.

If you are a Google Workspace administrator and wish to review or adjust the settings that affect Bard availability for people in your organization, access the Admin console | Apps | Additional Google services | Early Access Apps, then modify the Service status and Core Data Access Permissions as desired.

As of May 10, 2023, Google expanded Bard to support Japanese and Korean in addition to U.S. English. Simultaneously, Google made Bard available in more than 180 countries and territories. However, Bard was not made available on that date to people in European Union countries, such as Germany, France, Italy and Spain. By the end of 2023, Google intends to make Bard available in the 40 most spoken languages.

Yes, Google gives you control over your Bard activity history, much as it does your search and browsing history. To adjust the settings, select Bard Activity from the left menu. Then, you may choose whether Bard Activity history is on or off (Figure B).

Figure B

If on, you may choose to Auto-delete activity after three, 18 or 36 months or not at all. Additionally, you may access your Bard activity history, which can be helpful if you wish to review or rerun a previous prompt.

Yes, Google Bard is available to use for free. As of May 2023, Google Bard remains free of advertising, as well.

In May 2023 Google announced that Bard had switched to using Pathways Language Model 2 rather than Language Model for Dialogue Applications. Google promotes PaLM 2 as a “state-of-the-art language model with improved multilingual, reasoning and coding capabilities.”

SEE: Learn how to successfully use ChatGPT.

Google plans to make PaLM 2 available in four distinct sizes: Gecko, Otto, Bison and Unicorn. The distinct sizes are intended to serve a wide range of computing environments. The smallest, Gecko, is intended to be functional even on a mobile device without an internet connection.

The ability to access current internet content is a key differentiator between Google Bard and many other chatbot AI systems. Many large language model chatbot systems were trained on older data and lack access to information about current events. This inability to browse the internet limits the usefulness of many of these systems.

Three alternatives to Bard that can access current internet content and are worth exploring are:

ChatGPT Plus: Available for $20 per month in a web browser or in an iPhone app. In late May 2023, Microsoft announced that the free edition of ChatGPT will gain access to Bing, as well.

Cheat Sheets For AI Information Overload

With the overload of AI information flooding our digital lives, help is needed to sort through the ... [+] waves of information.

AI has become the tech industry's buzzword of late. Every day some tech company or even a mainstream company states that they have joined the AI revolution and will be using or applying AI to their technology-related roadmap.

There is now a firehose stream of AI-related information published each day, and it is getting harder to keep up with what's happening in AI. And since APIs have been created for AI engines like ChatGPT, Google's Bard, etc., hundreds of new AI apps are created daily.

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A reporter recently asked me how I stay current on news and trends in AI. My answer was that I had collected a group of "cheat sheets" I get daily informing me of AI news and new AI apps.

The first cheat sheet I subscribe to is Ben's Bites. This daily newsletter delivers a dose of what's going on in AI. Besides the short news updates, it also has a list of new AI apps describing what they do. One of the best free daily newsletters in the genre of daily AI news.

The second cheat sheet I get daily is called Superhuman. This website and this free newsletter has updated AI news, information about new AI apps, and even tutorials.

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The third one is The Neuron. This free daily newsletter provides short reads and sometimes humorous updates on the AI world. It is well organized, with edgy writing.

I also subscribe to Louis Bouchard's AI Weekly Digest. This newsletter provides a deeper look into AI's technical and ethical aspects. What I like about this free weekly newsletter is he only tackles one topic a week, shows a video explaining the topic, writes a dedicated article on the subject, and includes AI ethics segments with experts.

Fortune Magazine has many newsletters, but I subscribe to their Eye On AI newsletter by Jeremy Kahn. It provides a deeper look into the AI industry and the implications of tools like ChatGPT. It provides a connection between the real-time news feed of Twitter and more traditional media outlets.

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There are dozens of other AI newsletters, but the ones mentioned above are, to date, the most helpful in my quest to stay informed and up-to-date on the role and impact of AI on all of us.

There is one other AI subscription I get daily that is more educational than newsy. One of the essential skills someone needs to use AI chatbots is how to write useful prompts to get the best answer to an AI query. To that end, each day, I get an email from Copy.AI that gives me examples of prompts to get the best result from an AI Chat.

For example, the prompt suggestion I got today was-

"Write a sales script for a cold call that describes [product/service URL] to [prospect] and encourages them to schedule a demo."

One prompt I got recently was consumer focused-

"I've recently enjoyed watching [shows or movies]; what are some lesser-known shows or movies that are similar in style."

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One of the side benefits of Copy.AI is that each day you learn to speak AI query language that can help a person become more proficient in creating their own AI prompts.

As a tech analyst, covering tech and new tech areas is my job. So getting so many dedicated newsletters is important to my work. However, AI touches every aspect of humanity, and people's lives, and many people are very curious about AI.

This short list of AI newsletters is helpful to those interested in how AI will evolve and impact them today and in the future.

Stuart Varney: Media working ‘hand in glove’ with Biden admin as president’s 'cheat sheet' is exposed

FOX Business host Stuart Varney argues someone is telling Biden what to say after his cheat sheet was exposed during his press conference in the Rose Garden.

During his latest "My Take," "Varney & Co." host Stuart Varney discusses Biden's "cheat sheet" being exposed during his most recent press conference, arguing the media and the administration is working "hand in glove."

STUART VARNEY: See this? The president is holding a cheat sheet. 

He walks into the Rose Garden for a press conference with full knowledge of who is going to ask the first question and what the question would be. You can see it, all written out. 

And sure enough, the first question did indeed came from the Los Angeles Times reporter, and it was almost word for word the same as the question printed on the cheat sheet.

BIDEN CAUGHT WITH CRIB NOTES DETAILING REPORTER'S QUESTION PRIOR TO CALLING ON HER DURING PRESS CONFERENCE

President Joe Biden speaks about the economy to union members at the IBEW Local Union 26, Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2023, in Lanham, Md. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci / AP Newsroom)

At this point, we don’t know how the White House got the question, but it sure looks like the media is working "hand in glove" with this administration. 

The Los Angeles Times looks like it’s an extension of the Biden campaign!

It also tells us that Biden’s handlers will do anything to avoid a real press conference, with real, unscripted questions! 

This is the basement strategy revamped for the 2024 campaign.

BIDEN BELITTLED FOR USING ‘CHEAT SHEET’ WITH REPORTER’S QUESTION PRE-WRITTEN ON IT: 'IT'S NO SURPRISE'

FOX Business host Stuart Varney on Biden's press conference. (Fox News)

But it’s more serious than just a campaign strategy. 

The cheat sheet raises the question of just who is calling the shots. Who is exercising presidential power? Somebody is telling him what to say. 

And we are expected to just lap it up for another 18 months. That’s not right.

I will say this: if the president can’t handle questions at a time of war and crisis, if he needs handlers to tell him what to say, if we still have to live under the threat of a Harris presidency, he should not be running for a second term.

'The Evening Edit' panelists Jason Chaffetz and Carol Roth discuss the House passing the GOP's debt ceiling bill and President Biden holding the lowest number of press conferences since Ronald Regan. 

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