It looks like Google Assistant will soon have some generative AI technology (like seemingly everything else in the world). In an internal email obtained by Axios, two high-ranking Google executives spoke about the need for “assistive, conversational technology.” Peeyush Ranjan, GM and VP of Google Pay and Next Billion Users, and Duke Dukellis, Director of Product Management, said the company should prioritize work to address “people’s strong desire for assistive, conversational technology that can improve their lives.”
As far as the generative AI portion of the email, it reads as follows: “As a team, we need to focus on delivering high-quality, critical product experiences for our users. We’ve also seen the profound potential of generative AI to transform people’s lives and see a huge opportunity to explore what a supercharged Assistant, powered by the latest LLM technology, would look like. (A portion of the team has already started working on this, beginning with mobile.)”
Not only did the executives say it was something to focus on for the future, but they also said that work on a revamped Assistant for mobile devices has already started, so this new generative AI technology might not be too far away from getting into hands of Google Assistant users on mobile. The emails mainly focused on how generative AI could benefit mobile Google Assistant users, and there wasn’t any mention of Nest products.
Of course, if there’s a good way to leverage emerging technology in the home, Google and Amazon will probably be at the forefront. In fact, in an interview with Axios just last week, Amazon’s Senior Vice President of Devices, Dave Limp, said, “Generative AI is something we’ve been working on for a while, and it has huge potential — especially in the home.” Amazon is clearly on board with bringing the technology to Alexa, which means Google won’t be far behind.
Unfortunately, as part of this change to Google Assistant, the company will restructure and shift the teams that work on it. The email mentions a small number of layoffs because of the shift. Axios says it was told the transition would involve “eliminating dozens of jobs” out of the thousands of employees who work on the Assistant team. “As part of this update, we are also eliminating a small number of roles within the team. We have already let these teammates know and we will provide dedicated support to help them through this transition,” reads the email from Google execs.
There’s no exact timeframe for when Google Assistant will see generative AI become part of its core functionality. We also don’t know exactly how Google plans to use it. Will you be able to interact with Google Assistant like you would ChatGPT? Perhaps you could say, “Hey Google, write a review of the latest Nest smart speaker” and have it review itself. Maybe you could ask Google Assistant to draw you a picture of something. It’ll be interesting to see where Google goes with it.
Either way, we don’t expect it to be too long based on the speed AI seems to make its way into everything. And it makes sense for the digital assistant to leverage generative AI since it’s already a conversation AI.