News Summary

• Being the default Assistant app enables launching the app via the power button or a gesture, and the assist app can read the current screen text and images for processing.Rahman found that ChatGPT version 1.2023.352, released last month, included a new activity named "com.openai.voice.assistant.AssistantActivity.".
• This is all half-broken and under development, so it might never see a final release, but companies usually release the features they're working on.Of course, the problem with any of these third-party voice assistant apps as a Google Assistant replacement is that they don't run a serious app ecosystem..
• If the company rolls out this feature, users could set the ChatGPT app as the system-wide assistant app, allowing it to pop up anywhere in Android and respond to user questions..
• ChatGPT started as a text-only generative AI but received voice and image input capabilities in September.Usually, it's the Google Assistant with system-wide availability in Android, but that's not special home cooking from Google—it all happens via public APIs that technically any app can plug into..
• You can only have one app enabled as the system-wide "Default Assistant App," and beyond the initial setting, the user always has to change it manually..
• As a replacement for Google Search, though, where you ask it a question and get an answer, it would probably be a decent alternative.Google has neglected Google Assistant for years, but with the rise of generative AI, it's working on revamping Assistant with some Google Bard smarts..