Google assistant Wants to Make Your Chaotic Life Easier

A Conversational, Goal-Empowering Tool

Google assistant is the latest incarnation of Google’s emerging, AI-focused brand. Don’t call it Google “Assistant,” though. Rather than branding its new tool with a personality of its own, like Microsoft’s Cortana, Apple’s Siri, or Amazo Echo, our favorite internet superpower has decided to integrate this new development into other applications. Get ready to reap the benefits: Google assistant combines the Goog’s irrefutable expertise at extracting information from web content with its algorithmic brains, delivering on user queries in fresh, practical ways.

While Google has made its search engine the primary way users type in and receive information from the web, Google assistant ups the ante. By providing a two-way conversation focused on task fulfillment, this new tool wants to be your (not-so-secret) secret to success.

What You Can Expect from Google Assistant

Google assistant is not an independently-operating product (hence the lowercase “a”). Rather, assistant provides a fluid process that shape-shifts to function on whatever system or device you are using. Manifestations of assistant will feel similar to the voice commands enabled with “OK Google.” As of now, two new Google products will integrate assistant into their functioning, both available later this year: Google Home, which uses a voice-controlled speaker similar in appearance to Amazon Echo and Allo, a smart messaging app.

Built for individuals juggling complex daily lives, this AI’s aim is to make scheduling and planning tasks easier to both remember and execute. If you’re looking for movie times, asking assistant “What’s Playing” would produce a list of local showtimes. You would then be able to ask assistant to grab tickets for you, and could count on a reminder the next day that your movie is coming up at 7pm. Interactions like these will continue to streamline as AI improves, harnessing Google’s intuitive semantic system.

Context and Photo Recognition with Smart Replies

Most interesting of all, the Allo app, which users phone numbers as IDs, utilizes the same Smart Replies we saw introduced in the Inbox email app in 2015. As you’d expect from its name, Smart Replies functions like a mind-reading autocorrect, suggesting three pre-written answers to a written or photo message, which users can select and send. Google’s quickly-advancing AI comprehends the meaning of the incoming message and offers applicable replies, a service that’s particularly useful on mobile.

Allo will enable users to speak directly to Google assistant by asking it questions verbally or via text. This seamless integration with hectic, everyday life is Google’s goal with assistant, positioning the AI as an indispensable tool that makes tasks easier, minus the need for extra devices. Google’s CEO Sunai Pichai sums it up nicely: “You are trying to go about your day, and in an ambient way, things are there to help you . . . there are more intelligent devices, and they are there in that context to help you.”