Google Expands Voice-Based Assistant Service to iPhone

Google’s artificial intelligence-based voice Assistant is on more than 100 million devices now, and the company is leveraging a longtime competitor to expand the technology to even more people, according to Bloomberg.

At its developer conference, Google said it’s launching the Assistant as an application for Apple’s iPhone. The app will support many of the same functions as the service does on Google devices. Users will be able to integrate with Gmail and control home appliances. The application will become available first for users in the U.S. and support English. Other countries and languages will come later.

Google also discussed a software development kit for the Assistant, which will allow third-party hardware makers to integrate the tool into their own products. The expansion of the Assistant to the iPhone and other third-party products should increase its reach beyond the current 100 million devices. The Assistant can now converse in French, German, Brazilian Portuguese and Japanese. By the end of the year, the system will understand Italian, Spanish and Korean.