Google’s Magic Compose feature comes with a privacy trade-off

Image: Google

Google is rolling out the beta of Magic Compose, a new feature in its Messages app that uses AI to suggest text messages based on your conversation. But as Android Police reports, there's a catch: to generate suggestions, Google will send up to "20 previous messages" from your chat to its servers—even if you're using end-to-end encryption (E2EE) with RCS.

Google explains this on its Magic Compose support page, saying it will use these messages, and any emoji, reactions, and URLs they contain, to help its AI create a suitable reply. Google says it won't send any messages with attachments, voice messages, or images, but it warns that "image captions and voice transcriptions may be sent." These messages will then be discarded, with Google not storing any data or using it for training its AI models.

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Google’s Magic Compose lets you personalize your texts

Image: Google

Google recently announced a new feature today that uses Android’s guided customization and generative artificial intelligence to help users write more personalized text in its Messages app. Magic Compose lets you choose the tone of your message and then adjusts the text for you. You can use it for different types of messages and conversations. For instance, you can make your message more upbeat or more formal, or you can have some fun and make it sound like Shakespeare.

Magic Compose could be helpful for people who text a lot and need to switch between different tones and styles. But it doesn’t seem like an essential feature from what was demonstrated so far. It’s more like another way for the company to show off its AI capabilities in its Android apps. Along with other new AI-related tools, this new Google Messages feature could make Android more attractive in the competitive device market. Magic Compose will be available in beta later this summer.

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Google Messages on web get emoji reactions

If you want to send emoji reactions to someone you're chatting with on Google's Messages app, it's now possible to do that, even when you're on the web. Google updated its web client to allow you to send emoji feedback. You simply need to hover over any message you want to reply to, and two new icons will appear. One with an emoji, and another is an overflow options button. 

You can choose from seven reactions: thumbs-up, heart eyes, laughing with tears, surprised, sad, angry, and thumbs-down. It works on your messages and anyone else you're talking to, including group chats. But you can only send one reaction per message. The feature is rolling out to everyone, so it should make its way to you soon.

Source: Android Police

New code change suggests Google will move its Messages web app to Google.com

Google seems to be moving away bit by bit from the Android brand. A new code change seems to suggest it’s doing it this time with its Messages web app. In case you didn’t know, Android has a Messages app that lets you manage your messages from a browser. It’s hosted at the URL messages.android.com. But the code change spotted in Chromium’s Gerrit source code management suggests Google plans to move it to messages.google.com. The code itself shows a simple mechanism that remotely tells Chromebooks to stop using the former URL and switch to the Google.com one. The latter isn’t available yet but we might see the change soon or at least a couple of versions of Chrome in Chromebooks down the line.

Source: 9to5Google