Sources: Google has been developing a product for creating customizable chatbots, which could be modeled on celebrities, and plans to launch it as soon as 2024
Google wants chatbots that people can hang with—not just pelt with questions. — The search engine giant has been developing …
Context & Ripple Effects
Google’s reported work extends a long chatbot arc: it previously explored a messaging service with bots and AI assistance, then developer tools for bots in messaging apps, and later a conversational product for language learning. The new effort shifts the emphasis from task-oriented interactions toward personas people may choose to spend time with.
The move also arrives as personality-led bots become a competitive consumer-AI format, following Meta’s planned AI personas across its apps. Subsequent coverage of ads tested in chatbot conversations underscores why ownership of conversational engagement could matter commercially.
First-order effects
- Google would add a consumer-facing creation layer for customizable bots, broadening its chatbot efforts beyond answers and utility into repeatable social-style interactions.
- If launched, the product would give users a way to shape bot personas, including models based on celebrities, while making Google responsible for how that customization is presented and governed.
Second-order effects
- Meta and other consumer-AI platforms would face added pressure to differentiate their own personality-bot experiences through distribution, creator tools, or interaction quality.
- A bot-creation product could make tooling, persona design, and conversational discovery more important adjacent layers of the AI market—not just the underlying model.
Third-order effects
- If major platforms keep packaging AI as selectable personalities, chat may evolve from a single assistant interface into a portfolio of purpose- and identity-specific agents.
- That shift could make control of conversational attention a central platform asset, creating stronger incentives to connect bot interactions to advertising, creators, or other existing ecosystems.
The trend: Consumer AI is moving from one-size-fits-all assistants toward customizable, personality-driven agents designed to sustain ongoing engagement.