Productive AI doping into Google Assistant
Google’s email to employees mentions a more powerful Assistant powered by the latest major language models (LLM), similar to the technology behind ChatGPT and Google’s own Bard chatbot. According to the email, some of the team has already started working on this, starting with mobile.
It is known that Google has made some layoffs by interrupting the unit working on Assistant in the past months. While there is consensus that the team is shrinking, it is unclear how many people the firm has removed from this unit. As part of this change, Google is said to be concentrating the team working on Assistant. “We are deeply committed to Assistant and optimistic about its bright future,” said Peeyush Ranjan, vice president of Google Assistant, and Duke Dukellis, the company’s product director, in the corresponding email.
On the other hand, there is no mention of what features Google will bring to Assistant, but the possibilities are quite large. For example, Assistant can take advantage of the same technology that powers the AI chatbot Bard and answer questions directly, possibly based on information it collects over the web. By opening the camera application, it can detect the objects in focus and give instant information to the user. This is also an important feature for visually impaired people. Of course, these are just possibilities for now.