• Saturday, April 27, 2024
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BusinessDay

Google bets on Nigerian creativity with new AI model

Google’s Gemini-powered chat tool now operational in Africa

Search engine, Google, has launched the most advanced Artificial Intelligence to its Bard AI platform in Nigeria, bringing advanced capabilities and innovative features to users in the country.

Google Bard is a free, experimental AI chatbot that uses natural language processing and machine learning to simulate human conversations.

In a statement sent to BusinessDay, Taiwo Kola-Ogunhlade, the head of communications at Google (West Africa) said Google was bringing three major updates to its Bard’s features: access to the advanced Gemini Pro model, expanded fact-checking capabilities, and a new image generation feature.

Read also: Meet Gemini: Google multimodal AI mastermind

The update also introduces Nigerians to enhanced AI functionalities in understanding, summarising, reasoning, coding, and planning, setting a new benchmark for AI technology in the region.

According to Kola-Ogunlade, Gemini Pro in Bard is available in over 40 languages and more than 230 countries and territories, so more people could collaborate with the fastest and most capable version of Bard.

Kola-Ogunlade explained, “Gemini Pro helps to double-check responses in more languages, brings ideas to life with image generation and is one of the most preferred chatbix with or without cost.

“Consistent with our AI Principles, image generation was designed with responsibility in mind. For instance, to ensure there’s a clear distinction between visuals created with Bard and original human artwork, Bard uses SynthID to embed digitally identifiable watermarks into the pixels of generated images.

“Our technical guardrails and investments in the safety of training data seek to limit violent, offensive or sexually explicit content. Additionally, we apply filters designed to avoid the generation of images of named people.”

Kola-Ogunlade said that Google would continue investing in new techniques to improve its models’ safety and privacy protections.

He stated that these updates make Bard an even more helpful and globally accessible AI collaborator for everything from big, creative projects to smaller, everyday tasks.

“Try it out today at bard.google.com,” he said.