Google Bard didn’t have a great start (remember the sensational error at the announcement, which cost GrandeG an 8% drop on the stock market?), but update After update is becoming more and more powerful and useful, also thanks to the integration with the company’s services. The latest addition, which allows it to “watch” YouTube videos for you and answer related questions, seems perfect for saving time on recipe content or repairs. And to do get angry the creators of these videos (do you know how to download them from YouTube?).
The update, announced by Google in its changelog relating to experiments to implement “deeper engagement with YouTube videos” it’s a “richer conversation with Bard about it“, isn’t actually one absolute noveltyas it has been able to analyze the videos on the platform since September.
The significant difference, however, is that he can now interpret them and answer precise questions.
Which means you very well might not having to put up with it a whole video (and related advertisements) if you were only interested in his content. Let’s take an example.
Who has never wanted to sink the teeth in the cake Grandma Duck? Pages and pages of Mickey Mouse have shown us the tireless old lady churning out cubic meters of the famous Apple Pieand sooner or later we’ve all wanted to try the damn dessert.
To see how to do it, let’s go to YouTube and search for a video explain it to us. But the cake is very simple to make, you only need a few ingredients and a little time: we don’t want to look at all the contents and perhaps the advertising. So let’s ask Bard to summarize it for us content, and maybe we can ask some specific details, like if a creator uses a different type of Flour, or if he makes a variant with the chocolate, what kind and why.
Who has tried it (unfortunately access to YouTube requires activation of the extension of the same name, and at the moment the extensions are only available for English-language users) claims that it works quite well, and the errors I am acceptable.
However, there is a problem, which concerns the creators. First of all the advertising: if you don’t watch the video, the creator doesn’t get to see the advert (Bard evidently doesn’t count) and therefore doesn’t gets paid.
The second concerns possible on-demand content. Some creators of these types of videos show the recipes paid only within their website private, to which they refer in the video or in the description (the same can apply to fitness trainers, repairs or other projects). But if Bard prints the list directly for you, you no longer need to pay the creator.
Some sites have contacted Google to obtain an answer on this problem (not yet received), which is however connected to the big question of copyright management by AI. And that’s probably why Google updated theirs a few months ago terms of service to ensure that whatever you post on its platforms can be digested by AI.
As we were saying, at the moment the function is only available to users in English language as it is an extension, and these are not active for other users.
If you are interested, and you have the opportunity, you should go here and activate that call YouTube (the extensions are still active by default), then link the video and ask questions.
