A new messaging app named Allo is a “smart messaging app” that learns over time to be more expressive and productive. It’s based on your phone number, so there’s no fussy sign-up process to worry about.
It also has the new Google Assistant built in, so you can both chat with friends and Google Search. In Google’s example, a feature in Allo called “whispershout” adds a slider to your chat window that scales the size of your text, and add text overlay to images.
Allo can also make reservations for restaurants, if you want to meet up with friends. It can find sports scores, show you the roster of players; basically, a lot of what Google Search can do. You just don’t need to move away from Allo to tap into the lighter features of Search. Allo uses end-to-end encryption, too.
There’s also a smart reply feature that assumes you’ll say something like ‘so cute!’ when someone shares a picture of a baby, which it learns over time as you use it. It recognizes pictures because it taps into Google’s powerful image recognition engine, while your replies are learned via text.
Google Allo is available now.
