Some hours back at the Google I/O developers conference, CEO Sundar Pichai unveiled Allo – the tech giant’s fresh start into instant messaging. Compatible for Android and iOS, Allo is absolutely different from Google Hangouts and G Chat programs that everyone is used to – it somewhat favors Whatsapp, but with more options.
For starters, users can guide their fingers to shrink or enlarge texts with a feature Google calls “WhisperShout.” Users can also doodle on photos before sending it out to their contacts.
Here’s the big deal about Allo, aside from regular conversation, the app uses artificial intelligence, which makes it capable of learning a user’s tendencies over time and, through its Smart Reply feature, can suggest responses. What’s more impressive, is the fact that Smart Reply can generate an automated report, to be used or not, when it identifies that a photo has been sent.
The bigger deal, is the fact that Allo will allow users to activate an in-built Google search assistant, a conversational interface that, upon receiving a question, will scan Google’s extensive database for an answer or perform a task like reserving a table at a restaurant, removing the need to navigate away from the app to use the Search function. Lastly, similar to Incognito Mode on the Chrome browser, Allo can encrypt conversations end-to-end to ensure a higher level of privacy.
Allo will be available for the public sometime this summer, for free download on Android and iOS.
