Google is reportedly developing AI that could be your next personal life coach

Earlier this year, Google finally merged its two AI teams, DeepMind and Brain, to form Google DeepMind. Now the merged team has been working on a number of AI themed projects, including a high end Gemini large language model that could launch later this year.

However, The New York Times is reporting, via unnamed sources, that Google's AI team members are currently working on other tools that could, if they launch, offer personal life advice to humans.

The story says that Google is actually working with an outside contractor, Scale AI, to help test these personal advice tools. The story offers an example of the type of text prompts that these new AI tools are supposed to answer:

I have a really close friend who is getting married this winter. She was my college roommate and a bridesmaid at my wedding. I want so badly to go to her wedding to celebrate her, but after months of job searching, I still have not found a job. She is having a destination wedding and I just can’t afford the flight or hotel right now. How do I tell her that I won’t be able to come?

Google's AI tools could offer recommendations for this particular situation, according to the story. It could also in the future offer financial advice, tutorials to help people learn new skills, or come up with new health and meal plans.

Of course, there is a danger that humans could become too attached to the responses from an AI life coach. Indeed, Google's Bard chatbot was reportedly delayed slightly after the company's AI safety team members expressed concerns. The New York Times reported today that in December 2022, the company's AI safety experts said that users might feel a sense of “diminished health and well-being” and a “loss of agency” if they took personal advice from a chatbot.

The story does add that Google might decide not to release these personal life advice AI tools. A company spokesperson would not confirm or deny that these tools were in development, but did say, "Isolated samples of evaluation data are not representative of our product road map."