Google Bard Expands, But Canada Still Left Out

Google’s Bard AI chatbot has made its most significant expansion to date, becoming accessible globally and incorporating most major languages, while also gaining new features.

But despite being available now in Brazil and more countries in Europe, Google has still left out Canada, just like China and North Korea. We are super special, as always.

Users across the world can collaborate with Bard in over 40 languages, with the new following additions:

• Arabic
• Chinese
• German
• Hindi
• Spanish

Bard has also unveiled updates to offer more customized responses. Users can now:

• Listen to responses: This feature helps users hear their ideas aloud, facilitating better understanding and pronunciation.
• Adjust Bard’s responses: Users can modify the tone and style of responses according to their preferences.

Moreover, Bard has launched four new productivity-enhancing features:

• Pin and rename conversations: Users can pin and rename their conversations, making it easier to revisit prompts.
• Export code: Users can export Python code to Replit, in addition to Google Colab.
• Share responses: With shareable links, users can now share their ideas and creations more easily.
• Use images in prompts: Incorporating the capabilities of Google Lens, users can upload images with prompts and Bard will analyze the photo to help.

Bard can also now collaborate using Google Lens.

It all sounds fine and dandy, but Google leaving out Canada doesn’t seem like an accident. As it stands, the federal government is at war with Google over the Online News Act, which wants to force the tech giant to pay news publishers when story links are shown in search and Google News for example. Google has decided instead to block Canadian news to comply with the law, which kicks into effect at the end of the year.

Back in May, Google told us it wanted a thoughtful and responsible deployment of this new AI technology and is actively collaborating with experts and policymakers to ensure Bard’s compliance with local regulations when it comes to the potential of generative AI.

How to try Google Bard in Canada? You’ll need a VPN service to then change your location to the USA, and then Bard will load on the web.