To promote the safe and educational use of technology among teenagers, Alphabet Inc.’s GOOG GOOG Google Bard will now be accessible for teens, although with several safety measures in place.
What Happened: Google has implemented several safety features, or “guardrails,” to shield users from harmful content and provide insight into how generative AI operates, reported The Verge, citing the company’s blog post.
As per Google’s guidelines, teenagers who meet the age requirement to manage their own accounts in most countries will have access to Bard. Initially, the chatbot will only support English, but Google has plans to incorporate additional languages over time.
Bard is now available in over 230 countries and has been equipped with new features that can be especially beneficial for teenagers. The chatbot can now offer step-by-step solutions to mathematical problems and generate graphs from table data or prompts.
The company has specifically trained the chatbot to “recognize areas that are inappropriate to young users.” It has also “implemented safety features and guardrails to help prevent unsafe content, such as illegal or age-gated substances, from appearing in its responses to teens.”
Why It Matters: This move comes amidst a growing trend among teens to leverage AI technology for academic purposes.
A survey conducted by Junior Achievement in July 2023 revealed that nearly 44% of teens were “likely” to use AI to do their schoolwork for them in the upcoming school year. However, 60% of teens considered using AI in this way as “cheating.”
At the time, educators expressed concerns about using AI for schoolwork, stating it could potentially undermine students’ learning experiences.
It is important to note that when Google Bard was launched in February, it gave an incorrect answer during the demonstration, raising concerns about the chatbot’s accuracy. However, since then, Google Bard has undergone many improvements.
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This content was partially produced with the help of Benzinga Neuro and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
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