Google Planning New Messaging App With AI Chatbots (wsj.com)

An anonymous reader writes: The Wall Street Journal reports that Google is testing a new mobile messaging service. They say one of the defining new features of the service is the inclusion of AI-driven chatbots, which can answer questions asked of them in a conversational manner. Google veteran Nick Fox is reportedly running the team building the messaging service. It's not clear what will become of Messenger or Hangouts, or when the product will launch. "Google would steer users to specific chatbots, much as its search engine directs users to relevant websites. The move is strategic, because messaging apps and chatbots threaten Google's role as the Internet's premier discovery engine."

Comments

WTF?

[vikingpower]

messaging apps and chatbots threaten Google's role as the Internet's premier discovery engine

I mean, wtf??

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't tell Siri anything. She's only slightly better at following commands than my turtle.

Re:WTF?

[vikingpower]

I use neither Siri nor any Apple product. Besides that, I don't *speak to computers. Nor do I chat with them. Speech & chat are communication forms for human beings.

Re:WTF?

[stephanruby]

messaging apps and chatbots threaten Google's role as the Internet's premier discovery engine

I mean, wtf??

This is a partial revival of Google Wave, which allowed any third party developer to create bots and share it with others.

It's a cool idea, but it's more of an engineer's personal itch than a real problem people are facing.

Re:WTF?

[sglewis100]

It depends. You might ask Siri to recommend a restaurant. You might already know where you want to eat and just ask Siri to find it (for directions, to get the number to make a reservation, etc).

Re:WTF?

[KGIII]

In general, I agree. In practice, I have been mildly amused and spent far more time than I should have chatting to a chat bot. I know... I know... But, well, from my perspective the tech has gone so far in these years that I find it amazing. We've gone from dumb terminals and mainframes to a supercomputer on our desk and now back to terminals and everything "in the cloud." That's just the start!

So, yeah, I admit that I've wasted more time than I should have chatting to a bot. In my defense, I was probably high, drunk, or both in all except the last time. The last time, well... I was pretty sober and I still spent about an hour poking at it. I'm not sure why they claim they are Touring complete. If I asked it any even moderately complex questions the thing responded with things no normal human would respond with. I concluded that the people testing it were stupid and that it was no such thing.

Also, I blame being retired and bored. ;-)

Perfect

[DarkOx]

The was a vast shortage of ill-considered responses by people who did not really read the question on the internet. I am glad Google is coming to save us from that absense of automatic human responses, with real automation.

Google Now

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they could start with fixing/upgrading/making passable the conversational commands in Google Now.
I don't understand the reasoning behind rolling out a product entirely based on a feature they haven't gotten right in their current offerings.
Oh well, I guess it will just be one more Google product that launches and gets euthanized a year or two down the road.

Embedded advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

So, I guess if you are discussing something, the bots will insert into the discussion promoting something.

"Gee my bread isn't so good."

Bot : "I find King Arthur flour solves my issues."

Remeber kids, Google is an advertising company that develops tech to increase their ad penetration.

Re:Embedded advertising

[vikingpower]

And I already do feel so penetrated by their ads.....

Less jobs for humans!

[gti_guy]

Is it just me, or does this smack of obsoleting more jobs? Nice way to improve the world Google.

Discuss

[wonkey_monkey]

Google Planning New Messaging App With AI Chatbots

How do you feel about Google Planning New Messaging App With AI Chatbots?

FOOKING COONTS!

[PopeRatzo]

I'm down with this as long as there's a chatbot with a Scottish accent that curses a lot. Something like this guy who curses out a pizza delivery boy:

https://youtu.be/rc8V9fgzutE

Re:FOOKING COONTS!

[messymerry]

Beam it in, Scotty,,,

Google wants to become Ashley Madison?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

My first though here was that Google wants to become Ashley Madison.
http://gizmodo.com/ashley-madison-code-shows-more-women-and-more-bots-1727613924

Another terrible Google chat tool?

[trawg]

As Marc Andreessen said yesterday on Twitter, "Google employees will really enjoy using this"!

I too have little confidence in Google's ability to make a messaging app that people will use.

For such a giant tech company with so many smart people I can't fathom how they've managed to screw up instant messaging so, so badly. They could have easily had the dominance they have with email if they'd just built a nice, simple, cross-platform version of the old Google Talk client.

Instead it mutated awkwardly into Hangouts, something which seems weirdly present in different forms on different devices and embedded into certain of their web applications, with varying levels of functionality.

It bugs me that there's no native Windows desktop client, just some Chrome "app" thing. It really bugs me that the mobile application is is kind of worse than ICQ was back in the 90s - the user list does not distinguish between users that are online, away, or offline. The default view is just a list of your previous conversations. It bugs me that they've hidden the logout option (Settings -> Account settings -> scroll to bottom -> sign out) to basically trick you into running it all the time.

I am very sure all of these 'features' are intentional and the result of UX experts studying how people use the application combined with how their biz people want people to use it. I know their goal was to make Hangouts more like an SMS tool - they want people sending messages regardless of online status. (I've never been a big SMS user so I don't know how important the SMS integration for an Internet-based messaging app is to civilians; maybe it's a bigger deal than I think?)

Before Hangouts almost everyone I know was on Google Talk. My relatives around the world used it as a standard communications tool for quick chats and voice chat. Since it has gone to Hangouts they have all (except for one uncle) abandoned it more or less completely - I never see them online any more and I never get any Hangout requests. They've all moved to Skype for voice chat. No idea what they use for messaging.

I don't want an intelligent assistant. I want to be able to send quick messages to people on my list. I want to know in advance if they're online, away, or offline. I want to be able to set my status to any of those states. I want it to be secure and preferably open source (... realising the latter is a long shot). I want it to NOT CHANGE every few months when some new UI/UX person gets a hold of it. I want it to be simple, stable and reliable.

Please start here Google!

Re:Another terrible Google chat tool?

[Dragonslicer]

For such a giant tech company with so many smart people I can't fathom how they've managed to screw up instant messaging so, so badly. They could have easily had the dominance they have with email if they'd just built a nice, simple, cross-platform version of the old Google Talk client.

They don't even need to bother with a cross-platform client. If they would stick with XMPP, there are already plenty of IM clients for it.

Which brings me to my initial reaction - why do they need a new app for chat bots? If it's just an AI at the other end coming up with responses to your messages, why don't the existing programs and protocols work? It's not like we haven't had chat bots for 20 years already.

There is another word for chatbot

[taustin]

And it is spambot.

Anybody who believes, for one second, this isn't part of their advertising technology knows nothing about Google.

Re:Yahoo beat them to it

[KGIII]

Change your preferences at Google and the dumb-ass search goes away. Predictive search or something like that... It stores it in a cookie so you don't have to be logged in but you will want to save that cookie or just reset it every session. I have a fake pseudo-identity that I use which I even allow Google to track my searches and tailor my results. I use it only for very specific searches and through a VPN. I use a private session or a complete separate browser for any other searches. I find it handy and it actually gives me good results - I'm using it *specifically* for search results for tech-related questions. It has an email address associated with it and the information is completely, and totally, made up. I don't even use the email address as a spam email.