International Courant
Google was engaged on an AI-powered cellular chatbot app for Gen Z customers with interactive digital characters, CNBC has discovered.
Nevertheless, the corporate not too long ago “deprioritized” these efforts amid an inside reorganization, based on materials seen by CNBC. When a product is not a precedence at Google, it’s often not labored on.
Dubbed “Bubble Characters,” the app featured a alternative of speaking digital characters that might work together in conversations with Gen Z customers, based on inside documentation reviewed by CNBC. The corporate had been on it since This fall 2021.
The app’s description says it options “human-like” conversations that “take motion” and are “attention-grabbing to GenZ.” The conversations had been pushed by massive language fashions, that are large datasets used to know and generate human-like textual content.
“What began out as one thing out of a sci-fi novel grew to become the following era of human-level dialog,” the app’s description learn.
In an instance seen by CNBC, the pleasant voice of a cartoonish character engaged in dialog, requested follow-up questions, and even provided relationship recommendation.
The Gen Z chatbot was one among many AI-powered tasks that took benefit of Google’s massive language fashions in current months. Inside the Assistant group, which is engaged on digital assistant purposes or two-way conversations for varied platforms, executives have prioritized ChatGPT competitor Bard amid an inside reorganization that noticed some key executives depart. Some members of the Bubble Characters crew had been requested to pause their work on the Gen Z app to work on Bard forward of launch, based on correspondence considered by CNBC.
In the meantime, a few of Google’s high AI researchers have left the corporate to start out their very own chatbot firms, attracting funding in an in any other case sluggish funding setting. Character.AI, a two-year-old firm constructing a companion AI chatbot led by former Google researchers Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, raised $150 million in February led by Andreessen Horowitz.
Google didn’t instantly return a request for remark.
Google has quietly pushed apart plans for an AI-powered chatbot app for Gen Z
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