DUBAI: Google announced on Thursday that it is launching some of its most recent features and tools in the Middle East and North Africa region.
These include the Pro version of its multimodal AI model, Gemini, in its chatbot Bard; and the double-check and image-generation features.
Google integrated Gemini Pro into Bard in English last December and is now rolling out the integration in more than 40 languages, including Arabic.
A Google spokesperson told Arab News: “Now that Bard is powered by our specifically fine-tuned version of Gemini Pro, you will start to see a more conversational and lively tone in its responses; Bard is becoming a more conversational and intuitive collaborator.”
The spokesperson added: “We’ll continue to invest in fine-tuning the model and improving general language quality in a way that’s both bold and responsible.”
Last September, Google enabled users to double-check Bard’s answers through the “Google it” button, but this was only restricted to English conversations.
The feature will now be available in Arabic, so when users click on the “G” icon, Bard will evaluate whether there is content across the web to substantiate its response.
If it can be evaluated, the user can click the highlighted phrases and learn more about supporting or contradicting information found by Google Search.
The image generation feature, which allows people to generate images using Bard, is now available in the MENA region but only in English.
Google said that it has built in safety precautions, such as using SynthID, a tool for watermarking and identifying AI-generated images, which embeds a digital watermark into the pixels of an image.
This kind of watermark is not apparent to the human eye but can be detected for identification and verification.
