Following the Search Generative Experience (SGE) in September, Google is rolling out Bard access for teens with safety guardrails in place, 9to5Google reported.
This is coming to “most countries around the world” from Thursday onwards. It will specifically be available for those that “meet the minimum age requirement to manage their own Google Account” and have English set, while more languages are coming over time.
According to 9to5Google, Bard has been trained to “recognize areas that are inappropriate to younger users.” Safety features are in place to “prevent unsafe content, such as illegal or age-gated substances, from appearing in its responses to teens.”
When teenagers ask a fact-based question for the first time, Google will run the double-check response feature that “helps evaluate whether there’s content across the web to substantiate Bard’s response.” Bard will actively and continuously recommend that they use double-check to “help them develop information literacy and critical thinking skills.”
Google posted on The Keyword titled: “How we’ve created a helpful and responsible Bard experience for teens”. It was written by Tulsee Doshi, Head of Product, Responsible AI. From The Keyword:
Tomorrow, we’ll open up access to Bard to teenagers in most countries around the world. Teens in those countries who meet the minimum age requirement to manage their own Google Account will be able to access Bard in English, with more languages to come over time.
A helpful and informational tool for teens
Teens can use Bard to find inspiration, discover new hobbies, and solve everyday problems. For example, they could ask Bard for writing tips for a class president speech, suggestions for what universities to apply to, or ways to learn a new sport like pickleball.
Bard can also be a helpful tool for teens, allowing them to dig deeper into topics, better understand complex concepts and practice new skills in ways that work best for them. They could, for instance, ask Bard to help them brainstorm science fair project ideas or learn about a specific time period in history.
For even more interactive learning, we’re bringing a math experience into Bard. Anyone, including teens, can simply type or upload a picture of a math equations, and Bard won’t just give the answer – it will share step-by-step explanations of how to solve it.
Bard will be able to help with visualization, too. With this new capability, Bard can generate charts from tables or data included a prompt – like if a teen asks Bard to show in a bar chart how many hours they volunteered across a few month.
Both features will be in English to start…
TechCrunch reported that Google is opening up access to the chatbot with some guardrails in place to protect users. Bard has been trained to recognize topics that are inappropriate for teens and has guardrails that are designed to help prevent unsafe content, such as illegal or age-gated substances, from appearing in its response to teens.
In my opinion, Google appears to be making an effort to give teens a safe and reliable way to get their questions answered, be it about math problems, writing a speech, or choosing a university. This seems like a good thing, especially since Google’s Bard has been edited to avoid posting information that could be harmful to teens.