Google CNBC has been working on an AI-powered mobile chatbot app for Gen Z users that will feature interactive digital characters.
However, according to documents obtained by CNBC, the company recently “de-prioritized” such efforts in an internal restructuring. Generally, when a product is deprioritized at Google, it is no longer in development.
According to internal documents seen by CNBC, the app was dubbed “bubble characters” and featured a selection of conversational digital characters to converse with Gen Z users. The company has been working on this since Q4 2021, but Google declined to comment to CNBC.
The app’s description says it features conversations that are “actionable,” “interesting for Gen Z,” and “human.” Conversation was powered by a large scale language model, a large dataset used to understand and generate human-like text.
“What started as a science fiction novel has become the next generation of human-level conversation,” the app’s description says.
In the instances CNBC saw, the friendly voices of cartoon-like characters joined conversations, asked follow-up questions, and even offered relationship advice.
Gen Z chatbots were one of many AI-powered projects over the past few months that used Google’s large language models. Within the assistant organization, which is working on virtual assistant applications and two-way conversations for various platforms, executives are prioritizing his ChatGPT competitor Bard amid an internal restructuring that includes the departure of several key executives. I’ve been According to communications seen by CNBC, some members of the Bubble Character team have been asked to pause work on the Gen Z app to work on Bard ahead of the launch of the Gen Z app.
Meanwhile, some of Google’s top AI researchers have left the company to launch their own chatbot companies, attracting investment in an environment of slow funding. Character.AI, a two-year-old company developing companion AI chatbots led by former Google researchers Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, raised $150 million in February led by Andreessen Horowitz.
