Google Assistant is like a conversational Google Now on steroids

While Facebook and Microsoft are busy building discreet bots to squawk at you in messenger programs, Google's taking another angle. Google Assistant--a new smart assistant announced by CEO Sundar Pichai at Google I/O 2016--weaves together the complex information that Google already has about the world and the detailed information that the company already has about you to create a helpful AI that revolves your world. Building on the deep knowledge base of Google Search, the individual knowledge base of Google Now and your Google profile, and the advanced natural language recognition that's been improving in Android year-in and year-out, Google Assistant is designed to be conversational and help you get things done, Pichai says. For example, you could ask Google Assistant "Who designed this?" while standing in front of a famous sculpture with your phone, and the bot is able to mix location data and image recognition to identify exactly what you're looking at and provide the answer in seconds. It also ties in the personal knowledge that Google already has about you to tie your natural language queries to your specific scenarios.