Google Inc unveiled its answer to Amazon’s Alexa virtual assistant along with new messaging and virtual reality products at its annual developer conference on Wednesday, doubling down on artificial intelligence and machine learning as the keys to its future.
Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai introduced Google Assistant, a virtual personal assistant, along with the tabletop speaker appliance Google Home.
He also unveiled Allo, a new messaging service that will compete with Facebook’s WhatsApp and Messenger products and feature a chatbot powered by the Google Assistant. Allo, like WhatsApp, will also have end-to-end encryption when it is rolled out this summer. Duo, a companion app seeking to rival Apple’s FaceTime, will allow video calls.
Amazon’s Echo, a surprise hit that has other tech giants racing to match it, uses a virtual assistant called Alexa, a cloud-based system that controls the Echo speaker and responds to voice-controlled commands by users.
Like Alexa, Google Assistant can search the Internet and adjust your schedule. Mr. Pichai said Google Assistant can use images and other information to provide more intuitive results.
“You can be in front of this structure in Chicago and ask Google who designed this and it will understand in this context that the name of that designer is Anish Kapoor,” said Mr. Pichai, pointing toward a photo of Chicago’s Cloud Gate sculpture. For Google Home, the Google Assistant merges with Chromecast to control home devices.
