Yet another chatbot may be on its way to Google’s Allo

By Julian Chokkattu Updated February 13, 2017

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Google Allo, the messaging app that doesn’t seem to have taken off the way the company hoped, is about to get its third chatbot — and this one’s geared towards group conversations.

Thanks to a teardown by Android Police that examined the upcoming version 6.0 update, Allo is getting a voting chatbot that lets groups vote on just about anything — such as a place to grab a bite. It’s unclear what the bot will be called, but it’s fairly straightforward in that it simply tallies the number of votes per option.

Google recently added “Lucky,” a GIF-search chatbot that lets users search for a random GIF related to a specified subject. The new voting chatbot will be its third after Google Assistant — the first chatbot on the messaging service and the debut of the artificially intelligent bot.

If you “shout” an emoji — that is, use the send slider to make words, emojis, and stickers bigger — the emoji will animate it. It’s unclear whether this works with all emojis or just a certain subset. In addition to the standard pen, there are also two new drawing types — calligraphy and highlighter, in case you wanted to broaden your scribbling skills.

The version 6.0 update will also allow people to use Allo on Android Auto, making it the final Google messaging service to get support for the platform. It also fixes a bug with Android Wear notifications, though it doesn’t look like there’s an Allo app for the platform yet.

The update should be rolling out in the coming days for Android and iOS.

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Julian Chokkattu

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Julian is the mobile and wearables editor at Digital Trends, covering smartphones, fitness trackers, smartwatches, and more…

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