It looks like Google is developing a new AI, so move over, Google Assistant. According to The Information, Google is developing a brand-new AI assistant called “Pixie” that will only be available on Pixel smartphones. According to reports, Google’s new “Gemini” AI model will power Pixie. According to the report, Pixie will debut first on the Pixel 9: “Eventually, Google wants to bring the features to its lower-end phones and devices like its watch.”
According to reports, Google and Amazon intend to use the latest generation of large language models to revitalize their voice assistants. Neither company has emphasized how a large language model will benefit a voice assistant; both are just in the rumor stage. Today, the typical complaints are usually around voice recognition accuracy and response time, which a language model doesn’t seem like it would help with. Large language models should help enable longer-form, more detailed answers to questions, but the market will have to decide whether or not users want to hear a voice generated by a robot read out a paragraph-long response.
The article also mentions Google’s potential development of “glasses that could make use of the AI’s ability to recognize the objects a wearer is seeing.” With Google Glass and Project Iris, the company has launched and abandoned numerous eyewear initiatives.
The action demonstrates how, in the last ten years, Google’s perspective on AI assistants has evolved. It once believed that Google Assistant would replace Google Search, so it wanted Assistant to be widely accessible. For a while, Google Assistant worked well and was accessible through the Google app on iOS devices, Google Home/Nest Audio speakers, and numerous other pieces of hardware. However, Google Assistant never generated any revenue. The software was given away to partners, the hardware was all sold at cost, and the continuous expenses of voice processing mounted.The Google Assistant was never funded by advertising or any other sources of income. With Alexa, Amazon is in a similar situation, No one has figured out how to make voice assistants profitable.
Google earlier stated that it will “invest less in developing its Google Assistant voice-assisted search for cars and for devices not made by Google, including TVs, headphones, smart-home speakers, smart glasses, and smartwatches that use Google’s Wear.” This is because Google Assistant is a money pit. The plan is for Google to focus more on its own hardware, which it believes will offer the best defense against regulators threatening the company’s search deals on partner iPhone and Android devices, as per the prior report. This report claims that the hard-to-believe attitude at Google right now is “we’re going to take on the iPhone.”
This would include making the next-generation Assistant exclusive to the Pixel 9. Then, presumably, the ongoing financial issue would be resolved, or at least explained, by the phone hardware sales. The Information’s reporting suggests that this time around, the current Google Assistant isn’t going to be limited to the first Pixel and will instead be available to Google’s partners, though that could always change. When AI assistant No. 2 launches, it is unknown what will happen to Google AI assistant No. 1 (Google Assistant), though it seems likely that it will be killed off. Additionally, it would be a way to remove Google Assistant from users’ devices and save money.
The issue with going all in on hardware is that, as a tiny division, Google Hardware hasn’t been able to sustain this level of ambition in the past. Referring back to the statement regarding third-party devices, it is true that neither Google TVs nor cars exist, although the report does state that the latter are in development. Every year, Google releases hardware that isn’t always the best. Other years will pass and certain product lines (tablets, laptops) will become obsolete due to Google’s lack of updates. Additionally, Google Hardware is typically limited to about 13 countries, which is a very small portion of the world.You are shielded from all of this when using third-party devices. The availability of Google’s ecosystem used to be its strongest suit, and if you limit everything to your hardware, you lose that.
