Google is keen to see its ‘smart reply’ feature making its way to other third-party messaging apps. This, if it shapes out that way, will let users have access to short pre-written replies that users can tap on to send to the recipients.
The smart reply that appears will also be relevant to the messages against which those are shown. The Smart Reply first made its debut on Gmail Inbox and has since migrated to Allo. That apart, the feature is also available on Android Messages that however is restricted to Project Fi devices.
However, while all of these environments are almost entirely controlled by Google, the Smart reply feature will no doubt be facing its first real test in being able to deliver in a non-Google platform. That does make it really interesting to see how it fares on third-party apps.
According to the source that first broke the story on this, Google’s plans to make smart reply feature available to other messaging apps will involve creating an app based on Smart Reply. Likely to be named simply as Reply, the new app once installed and introduced to other messaging apps such as WhatsApp, WeChat, or Facebook Messenger, the contextually relevant reply option will become available on these apps as well.
Specifically, Reply will be able to support the following apps: Hangouts, Allo, Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, Android Messages, Skype, Twitter DM, and Slack. Visit this link, if anyone want to try Reply.
As for the benefits, those are obvious as users would be saved from typing every word they need to send out. Also, from what is known so far, the replies will be a lot more than just printed words. Instead, Google will likely even calculate the estimated time by which the user is expected to reach a particular destination and will offer that as a Smart Reply option.
Also, when in ‘Do Not Disturb’ or Driving’ modes, the feature will let the sender know the user unable to chat at the moment. Not clear though if there will be Auto Reply feature set as well, which will automatically send a message to the most common queries a user faces.
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On the whole, while it will be really interesting to see how Smart reply fares on third-party apps, it no doubt marks the coming-of-age of sorts for the feature given that it now ready for operation on platforms outside of the Google environment.
