Google's AI Developments: From Missing Assistant to Chatbot Bard

Google Assistant, the company's previous AI champion, was noticeably absent from the recent I/O developer conference, which focused heavily on generative AI. This raises questions about Google's AI strategy, with some speculating that the company is scrambling to catch up after being caught flat-footed by OpenAI's ChatGPT. While Google Assistant still has 700 million monthly users, the debut of ChatGPT and Google's own Bard has highlighted the shortcomings of older AI helpers like Google Assistant and Amazon's Alexa. Upgrading these established voice assistants with generative AI is not straightforward, as the two conversational AI models have significant differences.