Forget about Hangouts – Google launched a brand-new messenger app on Wednesday called the Allo. There's no shortage of messenger apps, but Google's latest offering has something clever up its sleeve: the Google Assistant.
Google Allo features a built-in assistant that can be summoned within a chat. Whether it's to check movie times, look up an address to a restaurant, or create a selection of automated replies, Google wants to create a smart messaging app "that helps you say more and do more right in your chats."
Allo and Assistant work together to bring a couple extremely clever features. First, the "Smart Reply" feature can create a message that you can quick tap to send away. Smart Reply also learns from your responses over time, eventually recognizing you tend to prefer a tears of joy emoji over an "LOL." An assistant that can respond to messages for you is definitely handy, especially if you're pre-occupied with other things.
As Brian X. Chen of The New York Times put it, the Google Assistant is that office intern who is standing by and always eager to chime in. Instead of tapping away from your chat box to grab an address or pull up a YouTube video, simply type @google into Allo and the results of whatever you're looking for will show up on the chat. Whether it's local sushi restaurants, breaking news, flight info, or cute cat videos, Google Assistant can help.
Google Allo wants you to know that it can have fun too. The app features more than 25 custom sticker packs and the font size of messages can be made bigger or smaller if you want to make an emphasis. You can also draw or scribble messages on a photo before sharing it. It even has games for group chats, including a movie title guessing game based on a series of emojis.
Despite all the nifty features, many users aren't impressed with Google Allo so far. The new messenger app's key selling point is its A.I. assistant, but it isn't as intuitive as users were led to believe.
NYT's Brian Chen asked the Google Assistant to search "movie showtimes tonight," but instead of loading a list of movies to the corresponding showtimes that he and his friend agreed upon, the search result simply generated a list of movies instead of showtimes.
Next, when Chen shared a cut picture of his dog to his friend, Allo suggested this response: "Nice pembroke welsh corgi." Well, technically Allo isn't wrong, but that's exactly what a Synth would say, or as Chen put it, "If someone said that to me in real life, I would add that person to my list of suspected Cylons." It's a whiny first-world problem, but it's exactly the sort of problem we expect Allo to solve.
However, even more users are concerned about privacy when using Google Allo, or lack there of – the app will log conversations by default and will be accessible to lawful requests. Google says it's necessary to store Allo messages to improve the app's Smart Reply feature. As a learning algorithm, Smart Reply can only improve with more data.
While the new Google Allo is ambitious, its flaws cannot be overlooked. Will you use Allo? Let us know in the comments below.
