Google has raised the bar in virtual personal assistants by revealing its generative AI powered version of the Google Assistant, also known as Google Assistant with Bard. This enhanced version pledges a more approachable, intelligent, and personalized digital assistant experience by integrating generative and reasoning capabilities of Google’s Bard AI platform.
Unlike the original Google Assistant, Assistant with Bard isn’t merely voice-activated, but can be accessed using text, voice, or images. It assures to understand the user better, and can assist with a broad range of personal tasks such as trip planning, searching of inbox items, shopping list creation, or text messaging.
The Google blog explains its new contextual feature vividly: “For example, say you just took a photo of your cute puppy you’d like to post to social media. Simply float the Assistant with Bard overlay on top of your photo and ask it to write a social post for you. Assistant with Bard will use the image as a visual cue, understand the context and help with what you need. This conversational overlay is a completely new way to interact with your phone.”
Google’s commitment to user privacy is reiterated, ensuring that individuals can set their own privacy preferences. The enhanced assistant is expected to be available to a portion of testers soon, and public access on both Android and iOS mobile devices is said to follow in the next few months.
Alongside this revolutionary release, Google also revealed two additions to its Pixel phone roster. These are purported to have AI at the core of their design. Remarkable aspects including a temperature sensor on the rear of the Pixel 8 Pro, AI-infused image editing tools, and a computational audio capability to neutralize wind noise in videos, among other things.
Considering generative AI’s remarkable progress recently, it’s reasonable to contemplate that the updated Google Assistant could add considerable value to the existing assistant software. Providing something new could be a game-changer, possibly offering a distinctive advantage for the Android platform.
Visions of a future world abounding in hyper-realistic personal AIs that can take care of our various needs or even partake in personal relationships are widespread in science fiction. While such sophistication might still be far off, an exceptionally intuitive voice-activated personal assistant like this one – capable of scouring the internet and personal data to furnish bespoke information and perform administrative tasks – could prove to be a truly beneficial outcome of the generative AI phenomenon.
