Are We Going To See An AI Based Messaging App From Google?
Messaging apps are hot nowadays. While it may have started with WhatsApp simplifying instant messaging and making it so easy to use that almost every denizen of the inhabited world uses it, however now, messaging apps are becoming much, much more than a way to share the odd joke or a selfie.
Biggies like Facebook and Apple have already made progress via their respective instant messaging (IM) apps, and now it seems, Google’s going the merry convoy.
The world’s largest search platform is reportedly well on its way testing an all-new Artificial Intelligence (AI) based messaging app to replace its rather underwhelming and uncharacteristically tardy, Google Hangouts app.
Clearly, despite Google’s repeated efforts over the last few years, the Hangouts app has just not been able to taste success with the world’s users. As compared to Facebook messenger, WhatsApp, Snapchat or even China’s WeChat, Hangouts doesn’t even step on the same playground!
Having a messaging app that sends only free messages is not enough in today’s world where a number of messaging apps provide a lot more than just free messaging. There are services such as video chat and voice messaging also available along with much more. To be able to match up with these apps, Google needed to work really hard on its Hangouts app and add a lot more to it.
Red-faced, Google is said to have improvised on Hangouts in order make it more interesting and appealing to users.
As per a report by the Wall Street Journal, Google’s all new Hangouts is significantly focused on artificial intelligence and will rely on chatbots to answer queries pertaining to factoids like weather, news, nearby places, restaurants etc.
Plus, having learnt from others in the field, Google is apparently now going to enable Developers to freely create their own accesses into the chatbots and share information with Google’s systems, in order to enhance the overall experience.
It is said that Google has been working on this app for more than a year now! So we should expect quite a fair bit of improvements.
The premise of this app, though very interesting, sounds pretty much similar to Facebook’s M — a virtual manager that lives inside Facebook Messenger and assists you in making dinner plans, carrying out searches, buy gifts and get them delivered on your behalf, fix appointments and many more things. Facebook also announced its collaboration with Uber for its users in the US so that users could book a cab while using the app itself.
Now that is what I would say a messaging app should ideally be able to do — understand and fulfill all your needs without you really having to explain things or extensively communicate with it.
As a personal assistant, such an app needs to be able to fulfill the user’s needs holistically. Should it succeed in doing that, users will stay and thrive on that one app for personal and social needs, and not have to jump to other apps for such purposes.
Back to Google Hangouts: Clearly, the idea behind creating this new app is to get Google’s messaging app up to speed with other popular messaging apps like Snapchat and Viber and also turn its messenger (which is said to have nearly 500 million users around the globe) into a self-fulfilled platform.
There is a lot at stake for Google with this new chatbot-based app, and if it does work out, it can work wonders for the search giant and probably change the way people use messaging apps forever.
Chip-Monks is really eager to see what Google is going to come up with this time, as everything that this company does is pure genius (barring a few anomalies like Hangouts and the erstwhile Google Talk).
Originally published at Chip-Monks.
