Google's Bard-Infused Assistant Could Be the Digital Helper You've Always Wanted

Google's October event was mostly about showing off the new Pixel hardware, but the influence of generative AI was woven through everything. Google even took the opportunity to announce a change to its neglected voice assistant. In the coming months, Google Assistant will be integrated with the Bard generative AI. That means a smarter digital assistant, but availability is unclear.

Assistant in its current form is fine for quick tasks like setting a timer or controlling smart home gadgets. However, the system can't reason its way through complex queries. There are often specific ways to phrase queries for Assistant and similar products, and any variation can cause the robot to sputter to a halt. For all its faults, generative AI like Bard is excellent at understanding natural language.

Google showed how Assistant with Bard can understand the context of your inputs, pulling in data from apps like Gmail and Calendar (see below). It also has the generative capabilities of Bard built in, so you can have it make lists, recommend vacation activities, and more—all inside Google Assistant. In some ways, this feels like the natural evolution of Bard, which has been limited to text and image input so far.

A few years ago, voice assistants like Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant were seen as the next big thing. Companies invested heavily in these systems only to realize down the road that it's nigh impossible to make money with them. Amazon has cut substantial staff from its Alexa group, a major money pit for the company. While Google employees haven't publicly decried the cost of running Assistant, its efforts in this area have been moved to the back burner. We see this often with Google—if a project is seen as unlikely to net anyone a juicy promotion, it gets ignored.

The announcement of Bard integration with Assistant could herald a turnaround, but Google's plans are still vague. All of the demos shown at the Google event used the mobile version of Assistant, a core feature of the Pixel and its Tensor AI chip. What about all the smart speakers Google has sold? Will they get the new Bard-infused Assistant, or will that experience be limited to phones?

We'll have to wait a while to learn all the specifics. Google says that a small group of testers should soon be offered access to the opt-in beta. Anyone with the new Pixels was also advised to watch for the option to use Assistant with Bard. At least at first, Google may intend to limit the new Assistant to its hardware. Previous Assistant revamps have started as Pixel exclusives, but this is the biggest change since Assistant's 2016 debut.