Google Assistant promises to smarten up Allo chat

The Google Assistant wants to get to know you. New York--At its most basic level, Google Allo is similar to the many mobile chat apps that let you schmooze with friends through a combination of texts, pictures, emojis and fancy stickers. But the piping hot messaging space is fertile ground for bots and artificial intelligence, and Allo, which Google starts rolling out to the Google Play Store and Apple App Store Wednesday, represents the coming out party for the AI-driven Google Assistant that was announced in May at the Google I/O confab. You'll have to communicate with other Allo users to get the full-fledged Allo treatment, but you'll also be able to send standard SMS texts to people who don't have the app. Allo, which is free, only works on Android or iOS devices.