Google Wants to Employ AI for ‘Supercharged’ Smart Assistant

Google’s Assistant is getting an AI-powered upgrade that will cost some workers their jobs.

That’s according to a report Tuesday (Aug. 1) by CNBC, citing an internal email to employees from Peeyush Ranjan, Google’s vice president of engineering at Assistant.

In that message, Rajan said the latest reshuffle will include a small number of job cuts as the company integrates large language model artificial intelligence (AI), or LLM, technology into its voice-powered software.

“As a team, we need to focus on delivering high quality, critical product experiences for our users,” Ranjan wrote. “We’ve also seen the profound potential of generative AI to transform people’s lives and see a huge opportunity to explore what a supercharged Assistant, powered by the LLM technology, would look like.”

PYMNTS has reached out to Google for comment but has not yet received a reply.

The news comes as Google is in a race with rival Microsoft for leadership in the Big Tech AI sphere, as PYMNTS wrote last week.

“Both tech giants are up over 40% year-to-date, underscoring the level of hype over AI,” that report said. “After all, the technology’s contributions not just to revenue but to the fundamental realities of life are expected to be a decades-long phase shift.”

As that report noted, one of the ways Big Tech is using its dominant position is by claiming the fundamental architectural on-ramps to artificial intelligence.

“Today’s AI operations require more data storage and memory capacity, as well as significant capital investment, industry-leading technical expertise, and above all, expensive large-scale infrastructure built atop rows of increasingly-scarce graphics processing units (GPUs),” PYMNTS wrote.

That’s why, as Google parent Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai put it, “more than 70% of generative AI unicorns are Google Cloud customers.”

“The deep computer science work, the talent and the infrastructure we have built from the earliest days … will enable us to stay at the cutting edge of technology,” he added.

Among Google’s other AI efforts is the company’s collaboration with BigCommerce, which is integrating Google Cloud’s AI with its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) eCommerce platform.

These additions give merchants the potential to improve their operational efficiencies, enhance the customer experience and drive more sales, the companies said Monday (July 31).

“Creating AI-powered solutions with Google Cloud cements the significance of our collaborative partnership as we move to strengthen AI in the eCommerce industry together,” BigCommerce Senior Vice President of Product Troy Cox said in a news release.