The freedom of using your smartphone your way lies in Android and as a result, you get the freedom to choose your preferred Smart Assistant. While the majority uses Google Assistant, there are other options available such as Alexa, Bixby, and a new name could join this list soon, which could be ChatGPT.
Unveiled in 2022, ChatGPT is OpenAI’s artificial intelligence-based Chatbot that can help you with mostly anything you need to online and offline as well. It has the perfect traits of being a digital assistant and OpenAI could soon leverage that capability by allowing users to set ChatGPT as the default assistant on Android phones, thereby replacing Google Assistant.
The report comes from Android Authority, where it reveals that OpenAI could make it more convenient for users on Android to access ChatGPT, rather than opening the app every time to type your query or press on the mic icon to talk to the assistant. The evidence of such a feature being under development was found through an APK teardown of ChatGPT version 1.2023.352, which released last month.
It included a new activity named ‘com.openai.voice.assistant.AssistantActivity.’ The activity remains disabled by default, but can be manually enabled and launched. After enabling it manually, the publication found that it allowed them to invoke ChatGPT from anywhere on their phone instead of through the app
Read More: All ChatGPT users can now use this paid feature for free
It came up with “the same swirling animation as the one shown when using the in-app voice chat mode. This overlay appears over other apps and doesn’t take up the entire screen like the in-app voice chat mode. So, presumably, you could talk to ChatGPT from any screen by invoking this assistant”, said the report. However, the feature seems to be half-baked as of now, as it couldn’t take any commands from the user and would shut off instantly after being invoked.
If ChatGPT for Android does bring this functionality, it could become really easy for users to quickly access ChatGPT which in its current state, is way more smarter and useful than Google Assistant. We don’t know whether it will also be able to perform system commands such as turning off Wi-Fi or the flashlight. But, bringing Generative AI-based assistant at the user’s fingertips is enough for the users to make a switch from Google Assistant.
Google Is Already Working On a Counter
Google has already been working on a feature to counter this functionality and it could unveil it any day now. The company announced that Google Assistant with Bard has been in the works last year and it could bring the very same features which OpenAI is aiming to bring with ChatGPT on Android. Once Bard (Google’s own Generative AI chatbot) gets integrated with Google Assistant, it’s going to be a worthy rivalry between the two companies. However, the choice would still remain in the users’ hands, as to which one of the AI chatbots works better for them and suits their needs.