(Reuters) – Google Inc (NASDAQ: ) on Wednesday announced plans to add artificial intelligence capabilities to its virtual assistant.

AI will allow the assistant to help people plan trips or learn about emails and then ask questions, a company executive told Reuters.

Alphabet’s subsidiary Google (NASDAQ: ) said it plans to add artificial intelligence features from its chatbot (Bard) to a version of its virtual assistant. Capabilities on mobile devices.

“An entire task is accomplished by a few simple questions you ask your assistant, which we think is a very powerful concept,” Sissy Xiao, Google vice president and general manager of Google Assistant and Bard, told Reuters in an interview. .

Google and other tech companies are racing to build some form of artificial intelligence into new or existing products. MetaPlatforms (NASDAQ: ), Amazon (NASDAQ: ) and Microsoft have intensified their efforts in this sector this year.

Hsiao added that the new version of Google Assistant will access a mobile phone’s camera and microphone and allow users to input images or audio in large language format to help answer questions.

He explained that since Google is still in the “learning phase” of developing artificial intelligence, the launch will not have any revenue-generating features.

Google said the new software would be available “soon” on its trusted testing site, but it did not disclose a release date. The company plans to release a version for phones running Apple’s Android and iOS systems.

(Prepared by Noha Zakaria for Arabian Bulletin – Editing by Ali Khafaji)