Google is toying with a new form of texting, allowing users to oversee an AI that does most of the chatting for you.

Maintaining that wild popularity

Google’s experimental product lab, Area 120, is currently testing a new chat helper to aid users in keeping track of conversations across multiple platforms. They're calling it Reply.

The new platform isn’t meant to just integrate with Google’s own Hangouts and Allo but would also be compatible with Android Messages, Facebook Messenger, Skype, Twitter, Slack, and WhatsApp.

The aim of Reply is to generate AI-based suggested replies in order to answer multiple conversations more efficiently.

One-tap replies

Reply’s suggested responses will take into account your calendar, location, and planner to answer questions like “What time will you be home?” and “When can you meet?” with greater accuracy.

Reply can also be set to automatically tell people you’re on holiday by tracking your calendar, and set itself to silent mode when you don't want to be disturbed. However it can still scan for urgent messages.

The new text-helper is something of an evolution of pre-written messages, reacting to incoming messages and adding information automatically. It’s really now just a game of attention and permission.

What do you think about AI-based texting? Unnecessary or quite handy? Let us know what you think in our comment section below.