Google Bard Is Now Available For Teens In Many Countries With 'Safety Measures'; Everything You Need To Know

Google is planning to make its AI chatbot, Bard, available to teenagers in most countries. Tulsee Doshi, Google's Head of Product, Responsible AI, announced that access to Bard for teens will begin today, with English language support initially and plans to expand to more languages in the future.

Taking to a blog post, Google had announced that it had gone through extensive consultations with child safety and development specialists before putting out its teen app to ensure that strong content controls prioritising safety were implemented. The Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) and other organisations were instrumental in helping Google design an experience that meets the needs of families and teenagers.

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“Bard is meant to be an inspirational tool for youngsters, helping them solve problems, find new interests, and engage in interactive learning,” the blog stated. Doshi emphasised a recent addition to Bard's capabilities that helps users learn maths by offering detailed explanations for problems they input or upload, which can also help teens.

FOSI's founder and CEO, Stephen Balkam, stressed the significance of generative AI skills going forward, citing their research as evidence. Teens that gave Google direct input were interested in adopting generative AI and wanted to know more about its limits.

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Google has added safeguards and safety features in response to complaints about offensive content and false information spreading all over the world. Bard has been taught to identify information that is judged unsuitable for younger users, and safeguards have been put in place to stop the creation of hazardous content, such as content that contains illicit or age-restricted substances, the blog post added.

Doshi acknowledged the possibility of errors in large language models (LLMs) and clarified that Google has implemented a function that allows users to double-check their responses. Bard will automatically use this capability to evaluate the content on the internet in answer to fact-based questions posed by teenagers, thereby confirming the accuracy of Bard's response.