Google Assistant is finally going to get a bit of generative AI

Google Assistant looks to finally be on the receiving end of some generative AI and will soon be able to condense long passages of website text into manageable, clear-cut summaries. An update is being worked on in the Google app beta version 14.29 and a new “Summarize” feature has been spotted by 9to5 Google that should allow the Google Assistant to condense the content of any website with a quick voice command. Though Google has clearly been focused on harnessing the power of generative AI in 2023, this is some of the first work we’ve seen actually make it to the Google Assistant.

Google has been pushing generative AI pretty hard this year, including work on Bard (their ChatGPT competitor), Search Generative Experience, and NotebookLM. That final announcement – NotebookLM – introduced a new service that uses large language models to assist in the comprehension of large documents the user provides. Google’s existing products, such as Gmail, Docs, and Google Messages, have also been augmented with writing and rewriting tools, effectively acting as digital writing assistants.

According to the information from the beta version of the Google app dug up by 9to5 Google, this new Summarize feature will be triggered when the Assistant is called on during a web browsing session. With a quick “Summarize this” command, users will presumably get a condensed version of the content on the screen. Additionally, the new Summarize feature will be available both in Chrome or via a Custom Tab like you may get when clicking a link in Twitter or Google Discover.

Coming soon to a phone near you

As of now, none of this actually works and the Assistant just shows an error message when asked to summarize a site. But the implications of this are pretty vast. First, this will mark one of the first steps in integrating generative AI capabilities directly into Google Assistant. That alone is a big deal.

But more importantly, this sort of tech could drastically change the way users interact with the web in general. Even with a post like this one, if readers can have the Google Assistant quickly and efficiently give you the Cliff’s Notes version, aren’t you going to be tempted to do that on a more regular basis if it works? And in that scenario – where publishers make money from display ads to keep the lights on – don’t you think it will have the potential to harm publishers in the long run?

For now, I’m not sure. I do know that these sorts of scenarios are precisely where AI has the potential to truly shake things up. How often people will actually use it is a question we have no answer for. With Search Generative Experience, the answer to that question is a shockingly low amount. People don’t love change, but when those changes can save time and energy, they tend to come around. It’ll be interesting to watch how this all develops for sure.