Earlier this year, Google announced a refined messaging strategy that centered around “Chat,” the company’s RCS initiative. At the core of that was the Android Messages app, and with a coming update, it seems Google Assistant will be integrating with that app…

If you’ll recall, Google revealed that its messaging app Allo would be taking a backseat to Android Messages, and in the time since we’ve seen a lot of Allo’s big features arrive in Android Messages such as Smart Replies. Now, it looks like Google Assistant is going to do the same thing.

As spotted by XDA-Developers, Google is currently testing Assistant integration within Android Messages. While the integration doesn’t seem to be exactly the same as Allo, at least not yet, it does look like it will end up being a pretty handy tool.

Apparently, Assistant within Android Messages is going to be able to give you “suggested” messages. This includes something like giving weather results when someone in the conversation brings up the weather, or restaurants nearby. It’s pretty basic functionality, but personally, I can already see it being incredibly useful. So far, weather and restaurants are the only things that have been working, but presumably, when this goes live it will work for a wider variety of responses/suggestions.

This also lines up with some information we got from a tipster as revealed in episode 006 of our weekly podcast, Alphabet Scoop.

I’d also assume that, to some extent, this functionality is going to tie in much stronger to RCS versus SMS. However, that’s just speculation. It’s unclear when Google plans to bring this to the public, but hopefully, we’ll see more of it soon.

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