The report comes courtesy of 9to5Mac, which recently performed an apk teardown of an unreleased version of Google Messages. The teardown revealed the presence of several hitherto unseen features hidden within the code. The most noticeable of these was the looming possibility of deeper integration of Google Bard-based features. Another thing revealed by the teardown showed the likelihood of Google using a sparkle icon (similar to the one on Google Bard) to invoke Bard with a single tap. The button was located right next to the emoji button on the composition box of Google Messages.
While it is still early days, the presence of a button to invoke Bard could also mean that Google is possibly working on adding AI-generated replies to the Google Messages app. If implemented, these replies could work by analyzing the content of the message and suggesting a list of possible responses based on the context of the conversation. Note that these AI features will be a significant improvement over similar features already available on select Google apps, including Google Maps, Google Meet, and Gmail.
As always, the appearance of these possible AI-focused features on an unreleased version of Google Messages is no guarantee that the feature will make it to the stable version. However, what is evident from the apk teardown is that Google is likely several months away from developing a functional AI-based responder for Google Messages.
