Google releases its AI-infused messaging app Allo

NEW YORK — At its most basic level, Google Allo is similar to the many mobile chat apps that let you schmooze with friends through a combination of texts, pictures, emojis and fancy stickers.

But the piping hot messaging space is fertile ground for bots and artificial intelligence, and Allo, which Google starts rolling out to the Google Play Store and Apple App Store Wednesday, represents the coming out party for the AI-driven Google Assistant that was announced in May at the Google I/O confab.

Google is facing stiff competition in this space, and it's not clear it will be able to persuade enough users to leave the the most world's most popular messaging apps — Facebook Messenger and Facebook's WhatsApp — Apple's rival Messages app, or even its own Google Hangouts to try yet another messaging app.

AI stands to differentiate these. Here, Google's Allo is also vying with Messenger's bot platform that taps fields like machine learning and natural language processing to intuit what users want and dissuade them from ever leaving the app.

The linchpin for Google will be Assistant, heavily featured in Allo but also in its upcoming Amazon Echo-type speaker, Home.

If you're lonely, @google

You can  begin a one-on-one chat with the Google Assistant directly, and by typing “subscriptions” get Google to deliver information—news, stock price, etc. each day at a designated time.

Even at this nascent stage, what Google calls "preview" mode, the Assistant shows a lot of promise and can handle numerous tasks: display news headlines and sports scores, play trivia, supply directions, get movie show times, let you know if your flight is on time or what’s on your calendar, surface nearby attractions and local businesses, and more.

You'll also want to be aware these conversations aren't shielded from Google's bots, unless you make them so. Your regular chat history is stored on Google's servers until you actively delete it, which the Verge reports is decidedly different from what Google said its intentions were during I/O. Allo includes an incognito privacy chat mode with end to end encryption and expiring messages.

Google's reasoning is that a "smart reply" feature built into Allo will only get smarter with this approach, and that the policy is no different than what is happening with its own Google Hangouts.

The Assistant is best positioned to leverage Google's strengths in search. I asked it for instructions on how to tie a bow tie; the results, with diagrams, were delivered inside the app, without me leaving the conversation.

You can invite the Assistant into a group chat inside Allo by typing “@google” into a text box. And sometimes the Assistant will show up without you requesting its presence, like when you send a message to a potential lunch date asking, "Feel like sushi?”  The Assistant can chime in with restaurant suggestions, and continue the conversation by letting you peek at the menu, get directions, and finally place a call.

Booted out of Allo

But there are limitations.

While Google plans to incorporate Open Table into the Allo/Google Assistant experience, it hasn’t happened yet. And Google hasn't revealed any other third party partners or an app store similar say to what Apple is doing with iMessages or a bot platform akin to what Facebook has begun.

I asked the Assistant which movies were playing nearby and got a list. After tapping on The Magnificent Seven I was presented options to select showtimes, peek at the cast, view the trailer and more. To view the trailer I was temporarily ushered outside Allo. To buy tickets, I had to hit showtimes, pick a time and theater and only then was shuffled off to Fandango.

Meanwhile, there's no way to pay a friend through Allo, as is possible through the likes of Snapchat and Facebook Messenger.

Allo boasts these other features:

*Smart reply buttons: During your conversations with friends (or the Google Assistant) Allo offers smart reply suggestions that you can tap on, essentially shortcut responses that relate to the last thing that was said. Some responses were generic or not very helpful, others closer to the mark. When talking about the food that I like, for example, one of the smart reply choices I could tap on was, “I’m vegetarian.”

Allo can also serve up smart reply suggestions that are triggered by photos since Google can identify animals, landmarks, flowers, or other objects that may be in a picture. So when I sent a selfie to a friend, he responded by tapping the smart reply, “Great smile.” .Of course, you can type in any response you want and ignore the smart reply buttons altogether.

Incidentally, you can use your voice to dictate a text response but can't verbally ask Allo or the Assistant a query, as is possible with the "OK Google" command on phones.

*Expressing yourself. By dragging the send button up or down before you dispatch your message, you can enlarge or decrease the size of your outgoing text. This “whisper” or “shout” feature works with emojis too.

Allo starts you out with a variety of sticker choices, which you can supplement via a Sticker Marketplace inside the app. The more than two-dozen available sticker packs are all free for now and many of them are a lot of fun. Check out some of them below.

Another expressive feature lets you scribble or type over your own photos before you send them off. It only works in the Android app at the moment, but will be coming, Google says, to iOS devices later on. Of course, you can already do this in Snapchat, Facebook Messenger, and Apple's Messages app.

Allo uses checkmarks to let you known when your messages have been sent, received and read.

*Go incognito. Call this the Allo Snapchat feature, the aforementioned incognito mode that lets you send private end-to-end encrypted messages that can be made to disappear after they've been read.  The sender can set the expiration for these messages, anywhere from five seconds to one week. Or, you can set it so that messages don’t ever go poof.

You'll have to communicate with other Allo users to get the full-fledged Allo treatment, but you’ll also be able to send standard SMS texts to people who don't have the app. Allo, which is free, only works on Android or iOS devices. Out of the gate there's no desktop or web version.

Over time, Google Allo promises to get smarter, by learning more about you and the choices you make. It’s not happening yet but you may get suggestions from Google Assistant or smart reply buttons that factor in who you are talking to--your kids, say, instead of your boss. These are early days, but Allo looks to have a promising future.

Email: ebaig@usatoday.com; Follow USA TODAY Personal Tech Columnist @edbaig on Twitter