Reply was an
app by
Area 120
Area 120 is Google's in-house incubator in which employees work on 20% Project product ideas. It has helped develop Gmail, AdSense, Google News, and Google Cardboard.
The Area 120 division was created by Sundar Pichai in March 2016 and has ...
,
Google
Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
's experimental workshop, released to closed beta testing in February 2018, and shortly after reported as leaked. The app allowed users to insert pre-defined replies called "Smart Replies" into conversations on
messaging apps
Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat allowing real-time text transmission over the Internet or another computer network. Messages are typically transmitted between two or more parties, when each user inputs text and trigge ...
on their phone such as
Facebook Messenger
Messenger is a proprietary instant messaging app and platform developed by Meta Platforms. Originally developed as Facebook Chat in 2008, the company revamped its messaging service in 2010, released standalone iOS and Android apps in 2011, and ...
,
Slack and
Google Hangouts
Google Hangouts is a discontinued cross-platform instant messaging service developed by Google. It originally was a feature of Google+, becoming a standalone product in 2013, when Google also began integrating features from Google+ Messenger a ...
. The beta testing was cancelled in October, 2018.
Reply suggested various responses to questions or statements based on statements by the user's conversation partner. The suggested replies varied according to the type of incoming message (detected by the tone, contents of the message, and the user's context, which may trigger "Vacation responder" or "Urgent" types of automatic replies). Additionally, based on the phone accelerometer, Reply was able to determine whether the user was in a vehicle or biking and could auto-respond appropriately. It could also reply appropriately when the user was sleeping.
The user can see the suggested responses in their notifications and decide if they want to send one of them from the notification without having to open the app in which the response is sent.
References
Discontinued Google software
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