Google is reportedly planning to rebrand its Assistant with Bard before it’s even hit the market.
It might be one of the biggest tech companies on the planet, but Google has always been more prepared to change its mind on a whim than some of its major rivals.
Take this latest news, for instance. Google only announced its Assistant with Bard AI assistant at the Pixel 8 launch event back in early October, which was just over three months ago. However, the company already appears to be planning to scrap the name.
Website 9to5Google has been performing its customary deep dive into Google code – this time for version 15.2 of the Google app – and has discovered that the previous “Hi! I’m Assistant with Bard…” greeting message has been replaced by “Hi! I’m Bard…”
That switch is not a one-off, either. The website has scoured the latest version of the Google app, and has discovered that the vast majority of ‘Assistant with Bard’ references have been whittled down to ‘Bard’.
In case there’s any confusion as to what’s being implied here, it all suggests that Google is preparing to cut the (admittedly somewhat unwieldy) ‘Assistant with Bard’ name down to simply ‘Bard’.
Another subtle change in language is how Google is now referring to Bard as a digital assistant, rather than a new version of the existing Google Assistant. Indeed, Google has also removed mention of the “classic” Google Assistant, erasing Bard’s link to this existing tool.
Google seemingly wants to position its AI assistant as a new and distinct tool, and to begin pushing its current Assistant set-up into the background.
