Following all the AI announcements from Microsoft and OpenAI at the beginning of the year, Google joined the party with Bard in early February. The AI-powered chatbot was then made available for beta testing in selected countries through a waitlist in March 2023. However, in typical Google fashion, Workspace account holders were not invited to the party, with Bard being limited to regular Gmail users. That's changing now, as Google has opened up Bard's waitlist for Workspace accounts.

Google updated Bard's changelog to reflect the chatbot's expanded availability for Workspace and legacy G Suite customers. The only exception is Google Workspace for Education accounts for children below 18. They still won't have access to the chatbot.

Note that if you have a Workspace account, the administrator must enable Bard access for the domain before you can access the chatbot. And even then, you need to sign up for the waitlist and wait for Google's approval.

If you are a Google Workspace admin, the option to enable Bard for your domain will appear in the Admin console under Apps > Additional Google services > Early Access Apps in the next few days. The option will appear in your Admin console even if Bard is not available in your region.

It is quite common for Google not to make its experimental new features available to Workspace account holders despite them paying for their accounts. On the flip side, Google is working on bringing Bard AI to more of its products, like Google Messages, albeit without the Bard branding. This should make your messaging experience much better.