Bard is the AI chatbot that Google announced against its rivals Bing AI and ChatGPT. Earlier Bard was accessible only in US and you need to apply for a waitlist to access if you are from other countries. Now that Google expanded the access to 180 more countries including India. If you are wonder what is in it and how to access Google Bard AI chatbot in India, here is the instructions on how to use Bard.
Bard and SGE
Do not confuse Bard with the Search Generative Experience (SGE) that Google announced in I/O 2023 conference. SGE uses Bard chatbot on top of traditional Google search results. To try SGE, you need to apply for Google Search Labs waitlist which is not yet available in India. However, you can access Bard independently without using SGE as Google removed the access restrictions.
Accessing Bard in India
- Open bard.google.com in your browser. Unlike Bing AI which is primarily available on Edge, you can use Bard on any browsers like Chrome, Edge, Safari or Firefox.
- Click on the “Sign in” button showing along with the instructions or on the top right corner.
- Login with your personal Google account. Earlier, you would be seeing “Bard isn’t supported in your country. Stay tuned!” message. Now, you will see the page shows a “Try Bard” button and click on that button.
- All terms and privacy conditions will be shown in a pop-up, click “I agree” button to continue further.
- Google will show a warning about Bard is an experiment and the results can be inaccurate. You also have an option to opt-in to get the latest Bard updates. Select the opt-in checkbox if you like or leave it unchecked and click “Continue” button.
- That’s it!!! You will see the Bard chat prompt where you can type your query and start the chat conversation.
As you can see, I am using Safari browser on Mac which works perfectly with Bard.
Google Bard Page Current Features
The chat page has few options to customize the use of Bard.
- Use light or dark theme by selecting the option showing on bottom left corner of the page.
- By default, Google will store all queries you enter in Bard prompt and the answers you get. The data will be kept in your Google account for 18 months before automatic deletion. If you want to disable the history, click on “Bard Activity” from left sidebar menu (if sidebar is not visible, click on the three lines hamburger menu to reveal it). This will open your Google account and click on “Bard Activity” option. On the next page, turn off the switch to disable storing your chat history.
- Other than that, you can check the FAQ, latest updates and help documents from the left sidebar menu.
Using Response from Bard
Just enter your query in the search box (called prompt) and press enter key or use voice input by clicking on the microphone icon. Bard will show the response like below. You can continue the conversation by entering another query in the prompt. Bard will remember your previous prompt and answer as a chat conversation. As you see, the response is detailed but without any citation to source website links. This is different than SGE in Google Search where you will see the source sites as a panel.
If you want to change the question and get new response, click the “Edit” pencil icon showing against the question and change it. Bard will generate three different drafts as responses to each of your query. Click on the “View other drafts” and select one of the three responses shown. If you do not like any of the current responses, click the “Regenerate drafts” icon to get new set of responses.
You have some more options below the response. Click the up or down hand icon to provide your feedback to Google as a good or bad response.
Click the “Export response” button to view additional options to export the content to your Google Docs or create a draft email in Gmail.
Click on the “Google it” button to view search related topics as links. Clicking on any of the links will open traditional Google search and show results for the clicked search query (not for your original query).
Finally, click the “More” icon to copy the content or report any legal issues to Google.
Final Words
This is how you can use Google Bard in India and get responses to your queries. In my opinion, this will not create big impact for users as you need to login to separate website for using Bard. In addition, Google is focusing on Generative Search Experience which is the primary focus for Google’s business. As Google showcased in I/O meet, the future will be to integrate Bard and AI in all Google products instead of using Bard as a standalone chatbot.
