Google Assistant was announced with much fanfare back in the day, with Google trying to add it to restructure Android and its Google app to put the voice assistant front and center. But over the years, Assistant hasn’t quite lived up to its promises, neither for consumers (due to voice recognition problems) nor for the company itself (due to no viable monetization). With Google’s ChatGPT-like chatbot Bard seemingly taking over this tent pole role at Google, it looks like Assistant development is further de-emphasized to focus more on the generative language AI.

A new CNBC report shows that this trajectory also means changes to the Assistant team at Google. An internal memo shared with the publication shows that the division is tweaked to focus much more on Bard rather than on Assistant. While an Assistant veteran is leaving the company for personal reasons, the Assistant division is now overseen by Peeyush Ranjan, who previously oversaw payments (i.e. Google Pay and Wallet).

As Android Police alumnus Ron Amadeo writes for Ars Technica, this doesn’t bode well for the future of Google Assistant. Even before this restructuring, the company hasn’t released a single Assistant-focused hardware product since 2021, and instead stripped the voice assistant out of some products, like some Fitbit watches and the latest Nest Wi-Fi routers. At the same time, the company shut down a few Assistant features, like Assistant Driving Mode, Duplex on the web, and Assistant Reminders (which are arguably now in a much better state as part of Google Tasks).

At the same time, it’s still unclear what exactly Google wants to do with Bard. Unlike Bing Chat, the experimental chatbot doesn’t exist as a part of Google Search or as the existing Assistant, and instead has its own website and space to access it. The company likely has yet to decide how it will integrate the new technology into its existing products, so we can only hope that the Google Assistant team will be able to help with that.