Google's Bard AI could be headed to your Android phone's home screen

What you need to know

• Google purportedly plans to introduce Bard as a widget exclusively to the Pixel phones at first.
• This is based on clues discovered in a string of code.
• Bard is currently a web-only portal, whereas Microsoft's Bing Chat is integrated into the Bing app in addition to its web version.

With the AI search engine battle between Google and Microsoft in full swing, the former might be bringing its fight to the mobile front. According to new intelligence, Google appears to be working on a smartphone widget for its AI chatbot, and it will reportedly be exclusive to Pixel phones.

According to code seen by 9to5Google (opens in new tab), the search giant appears to be working on a home screen widget for Google Bard. It's unclear whether Bard will be available as a standalone app or as part of Google Search, similar to how Bing Chat works in Microsoft Edge. The latter possibility might be an obvious candidate, seeing as Google CEO Sundar Pichai previously said the AI chatbot would eventually arrive on its search engine.

In any case, developing a native mobile version of Bard will go a long way toward improving how users can interact with the AI chatbot. It is currently available as a public preview, trained on a massive dataset of text and code, and it can generate text, translate languages, write various types of creative content, and provide informative answers to your questions.

Bard got a little smarter after Google added some PaLM language model upgrades to it, improving the way it understands what you're asking or telling it to do. This means Bard can do a better job of responding to your prompts for multi-step word and math problems.

If Google Bard is released as a standalone app, it would be a powerful tool for users. It should also narrow the gap between Google and Microsoft in the AI race, with the latter currently taking the lead with the wider availability of Bing Chat.

However, Bard might not be accessible on many of the best Android phones at first, as 9to5 speculates that it will be exclusive to the Pixel phones initially. The outlet reports that it will make its debut on Android in the near future.

With Mountain View ramping up its AI efforts with the amalgamation of Google's Brain and DeepMind teams, which previously operated separately, we can count on the company's AI chatbot invading every platform where Google has a presence someday.

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