Powering RCS Chat with AI
ChatGPT and other text-based conversational AI bots are taking the world by storm, and big tech companies are looking for ways to enhance their current offerings with these new AI capabilities. Specifically, AI is already playing a big role in enabling features like Google Lens, Google Docs and advanced autocomplete in Gmail. Conversational AI like Google Bard could make it easier to respond to messages, and the first signs of such applications are already appearing in the Google Messages app.
When I test drove the latest beta version of the message app, Discovered by 9to5Google An interesting recent addition to the message compose box. The icon, designed to resemble glitter, is what Google has so far associated with his Bard in limited public availability, and it sits right next to the emoji icon in Messages’ compose box.
The company has yet to talk about Bard’s role in Messages, but the app’s beta doesn’t yet allow AI to compose full replies. Tapping the button inserts the phrase “(TODO!)” into a message box. Thankfully, with limited functionality, he has a chance to see the AI’s handiwork before sending a message, and Bard doesn’t auto-send generated responses.
This feature could be a big step up from the Smart Reply feature, which generates some one-tap contextual responses you can use if you’re in a hurry. Using AI’s linguistic processing capabilities, it should be possible to generate detailed context-aware responses leading to multiple sentences.
We may have to wait until Google I/O for the official announcement of Bard for Google Messages, but if you live in the US or UK, you can sign up for early testing of Bard. The test is slowly reaching more people, and the hilarious response is worth checking out. It’s nice to be able to check the generated message before sending it.
