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Google rolling out ‘AI support assistant’ chatbot to provide product help

Over the past year, Google has been working to add generative AI to its products. The latest application of that is a new “AI support assistant” live on some Google Help pages.

When visiting the support pages for some Google products today, you’ll encounter a “Hi, I’m a new Al support assistant. Chat with me to find answers and solve account issues” dialog box in the bottom-right corner of your screen.

Google notes how its “AI is still learning” and that “help guide may show inaccurate results,” which would be in line with all other large language models (LLMs). Additionally, “human reviewers may process your help guide conversations for quality purposes.” 

We take steps to protect your privacy, including disconnecting your conversations with help guide from your Google Account before reviewers see them.

The chat window that pops up can be expanded to take up your entire screen, and each conversation starts with “Hi, I’m an AI support assistant.” You can “add details or ask a question” with the text field below.

After getting a reply, you can leave a thumbs-up/down to indicate how helpful it was, as well as “View my answer sources” to see what support documents informed the response. Google will suggest follow-up questions. Responses aren’t instantaneous and take a few seconds, while the follow-up questions related to the original query that we’ve tried haven’t worked.

  • Google AI support assistant
  • Google AI support assistant
  • Google AI support assistant
  • Google AI support assistant

There is some nuance to the availability of this new tool. The chatbot is not live for all products listed in Google Help. We’ve so far encountered it with Google Maps, Messages, and Account.

However, not all versions of this Google AI support assistant let you type in questions. The only one that does in our testing is Google Play. All others have you navigate through suggestions that relate to the current support article you’re viewing. 

At the moment, there are no changes to the existing human chat (and phone) options that Google provides for its products.

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Avatar for Abner Li Abner Li

Editor-in-chief. Interested in the minutiae of Google and Alphabet. Tips/talk: abner@9to5g.com