Alphabet’s Google launched the most recent version of its voice assistant on the widely used mobile operating system on Thursday with the launch of a smartphone app for its AI chatbot on Apple’s App Store.
TakeAway Points:
- Alphabet’s Google on Thursday released a smartphone app for its artificial intelligence chatbot on Apple’s App Store that introduced the latest generation of its voice assistant to the popular mobile operating system.
- Gemini Live, a voice-based function that enables users to have organic conversations with the chatbot, will be available in the new Gemini app.
- The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is getting ready to start looking into anti-competitive actions at Microsoft’s cloud computing division.
Gemini live on iPhone
The new Gemini app will include Gemini Live, a voice-based feature that allows users to have natural conversations with the chatbot. Apple has already said it will incorporate OpenAI’s ChatGPT into a refreshed version of its voice assistant, Siri.
“It’s great for when you want to practice for an upcoming interview, ask for advice on things to do in a new city, or brainstorm and develop creative ideas,” Brian Marquardt, senior director of product management at Google, said in a statement.
Gemini is Google’s answer to ChatGPT, the popular application developed by Microsoft-backed OpenAI. Google initially launched it in February 2023 under the name Bard and has since added more capabilities while weathering controversies.
Google announced the voice feature during an August event and first added it to phones powered by its own mobile operating system, Android.
Technical advances in AI spurred by the rise of large language models have fostered the emergence of a new generation of voice assistants far more capable than Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri and Google Assistant.
Google’s Gemini Live is a replacement of Assistant, an eight-year-old product built using older AI technology.
Hundreds of employees on the Voice Assistant team were laid off in January as part of a reorganization to “become more efficient,” a company spokesperson said at the time.
Google has since consolidated further. Last month it folded the Gemini app team into DeepMind, its AI research lab, in a move that CEO Sundar Pichai also attributed to increasing efficiency.
DeepMind is among the research organizations implementing new techniques to improve AI models as the traditional approach of building ever-bigger models has run into unexpected delays and challenges, according to a previous report.
US FTC plans to investigate Microsoft’s cloud business
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is preparing to launch an investigation into anti-competitive practices at Microsoft’s cloud computing business, sources familiar with the matter said.
The agency is examining allegations that the software giant is potentially abusing its market power in productivity software by imposing punitive licensing terms to prevent customers from moving their data from its Azure cloud service to other competitive platforms, the sources said.
The Financial Times first reported the probe on Thursday.
Tactics being examined include substantially increasing subscription fees for those that leave, charging steep exit fees, and allegedly making its Office 365 products incompatible with rival clouds, according to the report.
