Google Assistant Lands on Android Messages with Search Suggestions

• Google’s machine learning AI tool will be integrated with Android Messages over the next few months.
• English users will get text auto-fill assistance, as well as search term suggestions right from within the messaging app.
• The Assistant layer will run locally, so no data about your text messages will be sent to Google’s servers.

Google is actively extending the presence of its 'Assistant' AI tool, rolling it out on all its products and pushing it to the epicenter of its partners’ products usability. The latest step on this process was taken yesterday during the MWC (Mobile World Congress), where a Google spokesperson has announced that Google Assistant will be brought to Android Messages. The latter is the default messaging app of Android, found on all Android One phones and on models whose manufacturers decided not to use an alternative. What this means is that the millions of users of Android Messages will now benefit from the Assistant’s auto-fill suggestions and Rich Communications Services.

First and foremost, this will bring the “Smart Reply” and “Smart Compose” assistive technologies that are already available on a set of Google’s products like Hangouts Chat and Gmail. This renders SMS responses quicker, as AI can learn from the user’s writing and start providing suggestions that are often to the point. Another capability of the Assistant will be to scan the messages for identifiable snippets that correspond to searchable topics like the weather, movies, or bars/restaurants. Tapping the identified word or phrase will open up an informational panel, or even launch a search tab within Chrome.

source: 9to5google.com

There will be minimal changes in the Privacy Policy of Messages, as Google promises to keep the scanning and suggestion results on the devices, and only store the actual searches that are executed without the rest of the context. Moreover, the other end of the conversation will not see anything until the user sends this information to them. Right now, the suggestions will be limited to specific topics, but the spectrum will be gradually broadened as we move forward.

The new Assistant layer will be tentatively rolled out for English users around the globe over the coming months, but Google promises to expand its support for more languages in the near future. During the same presentation, Google announced that the Assistant would soon support Korean, Hindi, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, and Dutch, in addition to English, Spanish, German, French, Japanese, Italian, and eight Indic languages that were already supported.

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