Google AI Chatbot 'Bard' Can Now Code, Explain Snippets Of It

Google’s conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbot Bard now has the capability to help programmers with coding and software development tasks.

Bard can reportedly undertake tasks such as code generation, debugging and code explanation.

In a blog announcement, Paige Bailey Group Product Manager, Google Research said, “As a product lead in Google Research — and a passionate engineer who still programs every day — I’m excited that today we’re updating Bard to include that capability.”

The coding capabilities of Google’s Bard has been launched in more than 20 programming languages including C++, Go, Java, Javascript, Python and Typescript. “And you can easily export Python code to Google Colab — no copy and paste required,” Bailey added.

Developers can also export Python code to Google Colab without copy and pasting.

The search engine giant has revealed that Bard can also assist with writing functions for Google Sheets.

In addition to generating code, Bard can also help explain code snippets, which could be helpful to those learning coding.

Bard can also help users debug code - even code that Bard wrote. If Bard gives users an error message or code that doesn't do what they intended, the AI chatbot can be told to fix it via “this code didn’t work, please fix it” command.

But Bailey’s post highlighted that Bard is still an “early experiment” and may provide inaccurate results. “When it comes to coding, Bard may give you working code that doesn’t produce the expected output, or provide you with code that is not optimal or incomplete.”

Bailey suggested users to double-check Bard’s responses and carefully test and review code for errors, bugs and vulnerabilities before relying on it.