Artificial intelligence has been around for a while, but the introduction of OpenAI’s ChatGPT last year took things to the next level. It didn’t take long for Google tojump on board, although some may say the company was late to the party. Nevertheless, Google has spread out AI functionalities across a wide range of its products,including WorkspaceandSearch. Google is now seemingly looking to bring some of its AI magic ontoAndroid Auto, specifically to summarize long messages.
Strings unearthed within the Google appversion 14.52 (beta)by the good people over at9to5Googlereveal plans for artificial intelligence to generate a quick summary of a “busy conversation.” Based on our understanding, this would complement the existing ability to have the messages read out usingGoogle Assistant driving modeand not replace it.
When the feature is available, users will be greeted with the following description:
Assistant can now summarize your messages. These summaries will be generated by artificial intelligence, so it’s possible there could be mistakes. you’re able to turn this off any time in Android Auto Settings. Would you like to continue and have assistant summarize your busy conversations?
That pretty much explains what it is supposed to do, and we appreciate Google making it clear that these AI-generated summaries could be prone to mistakes. But a skeptical mind could question the usefulness of something like this, given the likelihood of AI misconstruing some of the important context of a conversation.
One situation where this could be pretty useful is when the group chats are buzzing nonstop and you don’t want each individual message being read out. Unfortunately, there’s currently no visual illustration of what these summaries would look like, but that should become clear enough as we inch closer to its wider release. Speaking of which, it’s still unknown as to when the feature will be available to all.
A dedicated toggle within Android Auto settings to enable and disable message summaries
AI components already exist within the Android messaging experience, like withMagic Compose on Google Messages, for instance. But this new integration is a different take and one that could have mixed reactions from the users. Considering the progress made by the company in terms ofAI capabilities this year, we expect 2024 to be an even busier year for the search giant.
Currently, there are some attractive AI projects under Google’s umbrella, likeHelp Me Visualizeon Slides, AI building blocks or Help Me Write on Google Docs, and the ability to create different backgrounds on Google Meet calls. More recently, the company unleashed itsnewest AI model, Gemini, with its Nano trim featuring on thePixel 8 Pro, powering tasks like Smart Replies in Gboard and Summarize within the Recorder app.
