A New Direction for Google’s Assistant Unit: Prioritizing A.I.-Driven Productivity

As part of the most recent significant restructure of the Assistant business, Google intends to “supercharge” its seven-year-old smart assistant leveraging fresh developments in generative artificial intelligence.

Peeyush Ranjan, Google’s vice president of engineering at Assistant, informed staff members in an email on Monday that the most recent reorganization will result in a few layoffs. In order to compete with Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa, Ranjan said the business would like to integrate large language model, or LLM, technology into Assistant.

Ranjan noted that a fraction of the Assistant team has already begun to work on the initiatives. Workers who are let go will have 60 days to look for new employment with Google.

Several of the modifications to the unit were first revealed by Axios.

The company’s “Voice” team, which is in charge of voice commands, underwent a dozen changes as a result of the reorganization, according to executives. Once in charge of Speech, Francoise Beaufays is now reporting to Sissie Hsiao, who is in charge of Bard and Assistant.

Google is under pressure to incorporate generative AI, which can react to text-based questions with insightful and original solutions and can transform words to images, into as many products as they can.

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Devices, Organizational Shifts, and AI Progress

That has required repeated improvements for the more established Assistant organization. Google uses Assistant in its mobile and home products, including the Pixel smartphone and Nest’s smart speakers and gadgets. Additionally, it is included into smart Televisions, smart watches, smart displays, and Android Auto-enabled automobiles.

Hsiao announced organizational reforms in March, emphasizing a priority for Bard. According to an internal document, Ranjan, who had previously served as vice president of commerce, took over as the unit’s engineering chief and now manages more than 1,700 full-time workers.

Since the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT toward the end of last year, Amazon has also underscored the growing significance of generative AI by incorporating it into Alexa products.

There is more at stake for Google, which has dominated internet search for the best part of two decades, as ChatGPT and Microsoft are involved.

Anyone can search for information in new ways with Bing, which employs the OpenAI approach.

Google made Bard available to the public in March and has since been releasing improvements. Due to its newest Product, the Palm 2, the business announced this month that it has extended to over 40 languages in other nations and will offer capabilities including voice answers.

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Source: CNBC