Google has started a reorganization of the Assistant division, the group that focuses on digital assistants, and will now also focus on the company’s chatbot.
The changes were announced in a memo Wednesday received by employees from Google Assistant Vice President and Head of Business Unit Sissy Xiao.
Jianchang Mao, who served as vice president of engineering for Google Assistant and shaped the current digital assistant, will leave the company for personal reasons. His role will now be filled by Peyush Ranjan, a former vice president of Google’s commercial organization who has worked for 16 years at the company.
“This year, we are more focused than ever on delivering services that impact our users,” Xiao wrote in an email.
Google Assistant VP of Engineering Amar Subramanya will now lead development on the Bard team. Trevor Stroman, formerly in charge of engineering for the Bard division, will continue to serve as “Technical Lead”, reporting to Xiao.
Google Assistant is a smart personal assistant developed by Google and presented at the Google I/O conference on May 18, 2016. The program works on the basis of artificial intelligence and language processing software – similar to Apple or Amazon assistants. Assistant is used on mobile and home devices such as Pixel smartphones, Nest smart speakers and devices, smart watches and smart displays, TVs, and vehicles through the Android Auto platform.
Changes in the leadership team of the division may indicate that Google may integrate Bard technology into a digital assistant in the future. However, the big question remains as to how this technology can be used for profit.
Earlier it became known that Apple is considering similar plans for its own digital assistant. However, the process of integrating Siri with an AI chatbot complicates its “unwieldy design”. Apple’s voice assistant’s database contains an extensive list of phrases in almost two dozen languages, mixed in a “heap”. Basic updates, like adding new suggestions, require a rebuild of the entire Siri database, which can take up to six weeks, while implementing more advanced features, like new search tools, can take up to a year.
Recall that on March 21, Google opened limited access to Bard – so far only for users from the US and the UK, who can sign up for a waiting list on the site.
Google has opened early access to the Bard chatbot – how does it work and how is it different from ChatGPT and Bing?
Source: CNBC
