Google has announced that it will open up access to its generative AI Bard tool to teenagers in most countries around the world this week. The default minimum age is set to 13 but in some countries the minimum is higher, you can check out the various age restrictions by country here.
Google said that it has consulted with child safety and development experts to ensure content is appropriate for teenagers. It also got advice from the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) to keep the needs of teens and families in mind.
"FOSI's research found that most teens and parents expect that GenAI skills will be an important part of their future,” says Stephen Balkam, Founder & CEO of the Family Online Safety Institute. “Google's thoughtful approach to expanding Bard access to teens represents an important step in offering teens the opportunity to explore this technology with the appropriate safeguards in place.”
To help teenagers start using Bard, Google has created a video containing five must-knows about getting started with generative AI. It has also launched the AI Literacy Guide.
For teens, the results that Bard responds with will also be slightly different. Bard has been trained to block unsafe content from being generated, for example, illegal or age-gated substances won’t appear in responses to teens.
To protect users against hallucination, Bard will automatically run the double-check response feature the first time teens ask fact-based questions. Google said that this feature will run automatically any time a new Bard user asks questions, in the near future, not just for teens.
Google will actively recommend to teens that they use the double-check feature to help them develop their information literacy and critical thinking skills. To use this feature, just press the G icon in Bard’s responses and Bard will then check the response against online content to check its veracity.
Source: Google
