Google managers hosted the company’s I/O developer conference this week, an annual ritual that has centered around artificial intelligence in recent years. With OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Bing chatbot seen as challenging Google’s search dominance, Google CEO Sundar Pichai seemed intent on spreading the message that his company is still the leader in AI – and the technology implementation accelerates.
Google’s own chatty big language model, Bard, was the headliner, and it’s now publicly available in 180 countries. Then came about a dozen generative AI product features and experiments that can help programmers write code, compose emails, or generate speaker notes for Google Slides presentations.
But hardly a word was said about Google Assistant, the awkwardly named and voice-focused AI assistant that was the company’s previous AI champion. That was a glaring omission, as Google Assistant has been at the center of I/O on countless occasions over the years, championed by Pichai as a universal AI helper that gets smarter by the year, and integrated into products like search and the Android app. operating system .
For most of the past decade, Google Assistant has been an I/O star, starting with the introduction of the smart Home speaker in 2016. Later editions of the event saw the launch of a program that allows third-party developers to use were able to make voice commands called actions. Then there were Google Assistant-powered products like the Nest Hub Max smart display, introduced in 2019, and a surprise demo of a feature called Duplex that makes calls to local businesses on behalf of a user.
Google was also testing a new chatbot, LaMDA, powered by text generation technology. But when OpenAI introduced ChatGPT, the answer to LaMDA, last fall, everything changed. The bot was fluid (if flawed) and quickly attracted millions of users, leading to internal disagreement at Google over the speed of the large language model’s implementation. Google released Bard in February. In April, CEO Sundar Pichai began referring to generative AI as a “super-powered assistant,” leaving the Google Assistant in the shadows.
The case of the missing Google Assistant at this week’s AI jamboree raises questions about the company’s AI strategy. Why should one of the biggest AI projects at Google stay out of the generative AI push?
One possible answer is that Google is in a hurry to catch up after being caught flat-footed by ChatGPT, and simply hasn’t had time to properly integrate Bard-style fluency into the older Google Assistant.
In response to questions about Google Assistant’s absence from the I/O keynote, company spokesperson Katie Hutchison said Google Assistant will power some exclusive features in Google’s new foldable smartphone, such as responding to the command “Hey Google, create a selfie.” It will also be available in the new Pixel Tablet.
Google Assistant today has 700 million monthly users, Hutchison says, while Bard is “an early experiment.” Experiments and user testing to inform how Bard can be applied in Google products is ongoing.
