Google is rolling out an update for its Bard AI chatbot that brings support to generate programming code and assist with writing functions for Google Sheets. According to the announcement, Bard can now assist users with programming and software development tasks, including the ability to generate code, debug and explain code.
The new feature has been rolling out for over 20 programming languages, including C++, Go, Java, Javascript, Python, and Typescript. The company also says that you can easily export Python code to Google Colab without copying and pasting.
If you are getting started with programming or need additional support, the chatbot can help to explain the code snippets.
To ask the chatbot to explain the code, you would say, “Tell me about the code within the Google/Jax GitHub repo.”
If you need to debug a piece of code, copy and paste the code and ask, “This code didn’t work. Please fix it.”
Bard can also help optimize code by making it faster or more efficient if you ask the initial output, “Could you please make that code faster?” or “Find error handling clauses you might have missed.”
Although these are welcome additions to Bard, Google emphasizes that the chatbot is still in its early stages. As such, it will sometimes produce “inaccurate, misleading or false information while presenting it confidently.” Furthermore, the company points out, “Bard may give you working code that doesn’t produce the expected output or provide you with code that is not optimal or incomplete.” So, it’s crucial to constantly re-check and re-test the code in the responses and ensure it doesn’t include errors, bugs, and vulnerabilities before deploying it.
In addition, if Bard quotes at length from an existing open-source project, it will cite the source you can check to ensure the code is correct.
Finally, Bard can also assist with writing functions for Google Sheets.
Even though you technically can’t trust the responses, the company believes this experience will provide a new way to write programming code. However, seeing the challenges of using this feature, it appears that the code generator isn’t ready, but Google still needs it to roll it out to complete with Bing Chat and ChatGPT.
These are not the changes coming to Bard. Google has previously announced its plans to roll out many search tools to the AI chatbot through the “Magi” project. For example, an image generator that is internally known as “GIFI” and AI integration for Google Chrome that’s internally known as “Searchalong.”
