Google finally combines Assistant and its Bard generative AI

At its event today, Google has announced Assistant with Bard. It’s Google’s personal Assistant now powered by generative AI.

The company said that it brings Bard’s reasoning capabilities and mixes them with Assistant’s personalized help features. Google says that you’ll be able to interact with it with text, voice, or images and that it will be able to do actions for you.

The company said that you’ll be able to access the new Assistant on Android and iOS devices but there’s no word about a rollout on its Nest speakers.

The company is referring to Assistant with Bard as an ‘early experiment’ in its current state and that it will be rolling it out to early testers soon to get feedback before bringing it to the public in the next few months.

Details have not been revealed today about how you can opt in to try it but it said to stay tuned as it will be sharing more information soon. The merger of Assistant and Bard was a natural step and something many people will have been wondering about for most of this year since Google launched Bard.

Like other assistants, Google’s Assistant could at times be pretty useless - whether it was because it didn’t catch what you said, or couldn’t provide any information for some reason. Assistant with Bard should be much more helpful, now however, users will need to be on the lookout for false information due to hallucination which generative AI suffers from.

Explaining a bit more how you’ll be able to use Assistant with Bard on Android, Google writes:

‘On Android devices, we’re working to build a more contextually helpful experience right on your phone. For example, say you just took a photo of your cute puppy you’d like to post to social media. Simply float the Assistant with Bard overlay on top of your photo and ask it to write a social post for you.

Assistant with Bard will use the image as a visual cue, understand the context and help with what you need. This conversational overlay is a completely new way to interact with your phone. And just like both Bard and Assistant, it’ll be built with your privacy in mind — ensuring that you can choose your individual privacy settings.’

Assistant is just one of the many Google services that Bard is being integrated into. The company also wants it available through Gmail, Docs, and Google Search. The rollout is going a bit slowly, though, so it can make its technology better and more responsible.

Have you used Bard yet and are you looking forward to Google baking it into Assistant?