It makes sense that generative AI engine Google Bard would add some of its smart features to the Google Assistant tool that has been setting alarms and looking up facts on the web for years – and that’s exactly what Google just announced at its Made by Google 2023 event .
Assistant at Bard is described as “a step toward a more personal assistant” from Google CEO Sissie Hsiao, and it builds on the recently added integrations between Bard and other Google products like Gmail and Google Drive.
For example, you can ask Assistant with Bard to highlight the most important emails you’ve had this week, or you can use the tool to write a social media post for you, to accompany a photo of your very cute puppy.
Another demo Google went through was checking where a party was (based on a Gmail invite), figuring out how long it would take to get there (via Google Maps), and then sending a text offering to travel there with a specific friend.
Personalization reasoning
“(Assistant with Bard) combines Bard’s generative and reasoning abilities with Assistant’s personal help,” writes Hsiao. “You can interact with it via text, voice or images – and it can even help take action for you.”
So you get all the creativity of Bard, plus the functionality of Google Assistant, plus the personalization offered by its integrations with other Google products. It’s a pretty comprehensive package and it will be available on Android and iOS in the coming months.
It appears some features will be exclusive to Android, due to Assistant’s deeper connections to apps and settings on that platform. Google has also emphasized that the product will be “built with your privacy in mind” and will have individual privacy settings – so we’ll wait and see what that means.
Generative AI was a big part of the many announcements at the Made by Google 2023 event today, from photo editing tricks on the Google Pixel 8 Pro to clearer voice calls on the Google Pixel Buds Pro. You can follow everything that happened on our Google Pixel 8 live blog.