Google is planning a new messaging app and a host of artificial intelligence-powered services that will be accessible through it, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
Nick Fox, the company's VP for communication products, is said to be leading the effort, as Google's existing Hangouts and Messenger apps are seen to be lagging behind rival offerings from Facebook, Apple, and new competitors like Telegram.
And while Google already offers Google Now, with voice-powered search and organizer features similar to Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana and Amazon's Echo, other competitors are also moving to integrate AI assistants into text-based messaging apps. Just as phone calls have given way to chats and Slack sessions, conversations with Siri and her competitors seem destined to transition to tapped texts.
Facebook has begun to test a personal assistant called M, which is integrated into its Messenger app, and an app called Luka now offers restaurant searches and reservations through a text-style interface or old-fashioned SMS.
Google, with its strength in artificial intelligence, has begun developing an AI engine that learns human language by analyzing movie dialogue, the Wall Street Journal reports. The company is also likely to create an AI app store, letting third-party developers integrate their own robot assistants into the app, just as they can in apps like Telegram and Slack, according to the paper.