The artificial intelligence launched by Google a few months ago will soon be able to consult your documents and emails. But Google assures that it is for your own good.
AI is becoming more and more part of our daily lives. Since the arrival of ChatGPT, artificial intelligence has continued to develop and is connected to many tools and apps in our online lives. Multiple companies are developing their own solutions to offer more features to their users. This is particularly the case of Google with its tool launched a few months ago and called Bard.
Designed like a chatbot, Bard is capable of many things. By analyzing the data available on the Web, it is able to answer questions of all kinds such as “what is the weather like today?” or even “what is the capital of Portugal?”. Its latest update, Bard Extension, however, comes to interfere a little more in our habits since Google’s AI is now able to be connected to your various applications such as Maps, YouTube, but also Gmail or the Google calendar that you may use to organize your days.
This allows Bard to give you the address of a restaurant, to help you prepare for your next vacation, to notify you before your upcoming appointments, to find a contact, a conversation, or even to write an email in your place. Google is bringing up the possibility of writing a CV or cover letter from documents that have been stored on Drive.
The exploration of personal accounts and the exchanges that we can have with our colleagues or our loved ones is not without raising some questions. The fact that Bard can freely access your personal documents or your emails raises the issue of confidentiality. Asked about this, a Google executive recalled that this “connection between Bard and your other applications was not visible to humans, but only used to train Bard on a daily basis”. The American firm also declared that this information would not be used to train its models or to drown you in targeted advertisements.
This Google manager also specifies that it is always possible to refuse this connection between the tool and your other private applications. An option which is however activated by default in the Bard assistant options… If you do not want the Bard assistant to be able to access the data in your emails or calendars, there are two ways to prevent it:
Disable access to your Google account
The first way is to disable access to your Google account for Bard. For that, proceed as following :
- Open a web browser and go to the “Manage third-party apps and services that access your account” page: https://myaccount.google.com/permissions.
- Log in to your Google account.
- In the list of applications and services, search for “Bard”.
- Next to “Bard,” click the “Remove Access” button.
- Click “Delete” to confirm.
Once you disable access for Bard, it will no longer be able to access your other Google apps.
Disable Bard integration in other applications
The second way to prevent Bard from connecting to your other Google apps is to disable Bard’s integration into those apps. For that, proceed as following :
- Open the Google app you want to disable.
- Go to app settings.
- Look for the “Bard” or “Google Assistant” option.
- Turn off the “Bard” or “Google Assistant” option.
Once you disable Bard integration in an app, the assistant will no longer be able to access the app. These new features, which are only available in English for the moment, should arrive soon in Europe and France.