Google’s Bard can now read emails as company tries to show it’s useful

Google is integrating its Bard artificial intelligence chatbot with some of its other products, including Gmail, YouTube and Google Docs, as the tech giant tries to keep up with fierce competition and get more people to use its AI tools.

Bard, which competes with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Bing, will now be able to look through and summarize emails from Gmail, search through Google Docs and check flight prices with Google Flights, without users needing to leave the AI tool’s main screen. Bard appears as a box where a user enters a question. Until now, responses have been limited to simple text replies or photos from Google Images, but the latest updates mean YouTube videos, links to Google Doc files, and summaries of Gmail emails can appear embedded within Bard’s responses.