Google is opening access to Bard, the AI chat tool, to teenagers in most countries around the world. Teenagers meeting the minimum age requirement to manage their own Google Account, they will be able to access the chatbot in English, with support for more languages in the future. The extended release comes with “safety features and guardrails” to protect teens, Google says.
The search giant said in a blog post that teens can use the tool to “find inspiration, discover new hobbies and solve everyday problems.” Teens can ask Bard about important topics like which universities to apply to or more fun topics like how to learn a new sport.
Image Credits: Google
Google notes that Bard is also a useful learning tool, allowing teens to delve deeper into topics and help them better understand complex concepts. For example, you can ask the Bard to help you come up with an idea for your science fair or refresh your story by learning about a certain time period. Google is also bringing a math learning experience to Bard that will allow anyone, including teenagers, to type or upload a picture of a math equation. Instead of just spitting out the answer to the math equation, Bard will share a step-by-step explanation of how to solve it.
In addition, Bard can help with data visualization, which means it can create graphs from tables or data included in a prompt. For example, a teenager can ask Bard to create a bar conversation to display how many hours he has volunteered in the last few months so he can understand visually.
Google opens access to the chatbot with some guardrails to protect users. Bard is trained to recognize topics that are inappropriate for teens and has safeguards designed to prevent unsafe content, such as illegal or age-appropriate substances, from appearing in its responses to teens.
Image Credits: Google
“We also recognize that many people, including teenagers, are not always aware of hallucinations in LLM. So the first time a teen asks a fact-based question, we’ll automatically run the double-check response function, which helps assess whether there’s content on the web to substantiate the Bard’s answer. He wrote Tulsee Doshi, Google’s Product Lead for Responsible Artificial Intelligence, in the blog post. “Soon, this feature will run automatically when any new Bard user asks their first real question. And for teenagers, we will actively encourage the use of double-checking to help them develop information literacy and critical thinking skills.”
Google’s decision to release Bard to teenagers comes as social platforms have released AI chatbots to young users with mixed results. For example, Snapchat launched its ‘My AI’ chatbot in February and faced controversy for doing so without the proper aging characteristicsas the chatbot was found to be conversing with minors about topics such as masking the smell of weed and getting in the mood for sex.
When teens access Bard for the first time, they will undergo an onboarding experience that includes resources and videos with tips on how to use genetic AI responsibly. The onboarding experience will also give teens the option to turn it on or off.
Today’s announcement comes just weeks after Google opened up its creative AI search experience to teenagers. The AI Search Experience, also known as SGE (Search Generative Experience), introduces a conversational feature to Google Search where you can ask Google questions about a topic in a conversational way.
