That Google I/O show was something special, wasn’t it? It was two hours of non-stop talking about AI without a break. Bard, Palm, Duet, Unicorn, Gecko, Gemini, Tailwind, Otter – there were so many cryptic AI codenames around that it was hard to keep track of what Google was talking about. A glossary would really help. The highlight was, of course, the hardware, but even that was talked about as an AI delivery system.

Google is in the midst of an all-out panic over the rise of OpenAI and its flagship product ChatGPT, which has roiled Wall Street and could potentially steal some of the queries people typically type on Google.com. This is an awkward situation for Google, especially for its CEO Sundar Pichai, who Mantra “AI First” It’s been about seven years now and he has nothing much to show. Google has been trying to get consumers interested in AI for years, but people only seemed to care about it after someone other than Google took a swing at it.

Even more embarrassing, ChatGPT’s growth has been powered by Google technology. The “T” in “ChatGPT” means “transducer”, a neural network method. Google invented in 2017 and never commercialized. OpenAI has taken Google’s public research, created a product based on it, and is now using that product to threaten Google.

A few months before the I/O, Pichai issued a “Code Red” warning across the company, stating that ChatGPT is something Google needs to fight and even pulled its co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, out of retirement to help out. A few years ago, Google panicked about Facebook and required all employees to create social features in existing Google apps. And while it was a widely hated initiative that ultimately failed, Google is dusting off this Google+ tutorial to fight OpenAI. All employees are now reportedly required to embed some sort of AI feature into every Google product.

“Mandatory AI” is certainly what Google I/O felt. In each section of the presentation, a division of Google presented a book report on the New AI Thing that they had been working on for the past six months. Google I/O was more like a presentation to Google managers than a show meant to excite developers and consumers. The AI ​​directive led to ridiculous situations, such as when the head of Android development came on stage to talk only about the AI-powered emoji wallpaper generator, not about any significant OS improvements.

Wall Street investors seemed to be one group excited about the Google I/O stock. jumped 4 percent after the show. Maybe that was the point of it all.

An AI show without mentioning Google Assistant?

Would you believe that Google Assistant got zero mentions on Google I/O? This show was all about AI, and Google didn’t mention its biggest AI product yet. Pichai Seminary AI First Blog Post since 2016 O Google Assistant and has an image of Pichai in front of the Google Assistant logo. Google highlighted past AI projects such as Gmail’s Smart Reply and Smart Compose, Google Photos’ magic eraser and AI-powered search, Deepmind’s AlphaGo and Google Lens, but Google Assistant couldn’t process a single mention. It seemed completely on purpose.

Heck, Google has unveiled a product that’s a continuation of the Nest Hub Google Assistant’s smart display — the Pixel Tablet — and Google Assistant. quiet couldn’t get a mention. At one pointthe host even said that the Pixel Tablet has a “voice assistant”.

The avoidance of Google Assistant for I/O seemed like a further de-prioritization of what used to be its AI staple. The last major product launch with Assistant speaker/display was two years ago in March 2021. Google has since shipped hardware where Assistant support has been dropped from Nest Wi-Fi and Fitbitand this disabled helper commands on Weiss. The company lost a patent case to Sonos and removed key speaker features such as volume control from its broadcast function. Driving mode assistant malfunction in 2022, and one of the Assistant’s most important features, reminders, is being closed in favor of Google Task Reminders.

It looks like the Pixel Tablet was supposed to be the new Google Assistant device as it looks exactly like all other Google Assistant devices, but Google shipped it without a dedicated smart display interface. This appears to have been conceived when the Assistant was a viable product at Google, and then shipped as leftover hardware when the Assistant fell out of favor.

The Google Assistant team has reportedly been asked to stop working on their own product and focus on improving Bard. The assistant never really made any money in his seven years; all hardware is sold at cost, voice recognition servers are expensive to run, and the assistant has no viable after-sales revenue streams such as advertising. Oddly enough, it seems that the power of these voice recognition servers is being turned off, as recently it takes a few seconds to process assistant commands.

ABOUTOn Wednesday, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte signed a first-of-its-kind bill to ban Chinese social media app TikTok in the state. The law, due to take effect in January 2024, was quickly criticized for violating free speech laws.

In a statement, Gianforte’s office called the law an attempt to “protect the personal and private data of Montana residents from being collected by the Chinese Communist Party.” Tech and legal experts say the way the ban is implemented in the coming months could set a precedent for how TikTok, which has more than 150 million U.S. users, is regulated nationwide, especially as state and federal legislatures authorities seek to restrict access to the platform. achieve.

“Now we are seeing a patchwork of efforts to limit [app]Whether it’s restricting access to minors or banning downloads on government devices,” says Courtney Rudsch, a research fellow at the UCLA Institute of Technology, Law, and Policy.

Radsch notes that a complete ban in the state will lead to much more complications. “This will be a watershed moment because it will likely be challenged at the constitutional level.”

How will the ban work?

The new law appears to place the responsibility for regulating usage on app stores and TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, rather than on individual users. Platforms like Google and Apple will have to remove the app from their statewide app stores and could be fined $10,000 for every day they don’t comply. (Google and Apple did not respond to TIME’s request for comment.)

It’s currently unclear how the ban will apply beyond that, or how it will affect users who downloaded the app before January 1st, but experts say enforcing it will be a daunting task. Companies are trying to use a tactic called geofencing to block an app based on the user’s geographic boundaries, but users can easily use a VPN to change their location to a different state.

“It will be difficult to implement it in a way that cannot be bypassed,” says Ramya Krishnan, staff lawyer for the Knight First Amendment Institute.

Will the law survive in court? ?

Legal action against the ban is likely to come. Keegan Medrano, policy director for the ACLU of Montana, said in a May 17 interview. a statement that the Montana legislature “trampled” freedom of speech. “We will never trade our First Amendment rights for cheap political glasses.”

In a statement released on Twitter on Wednesday evening, TikTok said“We want to reassure Montana residents that they can continue to use TikTok to express themselves, earn money, and find community as we continue to work to protect the rights of our users inside and outside of Montana.” TikTok did not respond to TIME’s request for a comment.

“[TikTok] it’s a place where a lot of people say different things. To make this information inaccessible to the people of Montana, and also to prevent Montans from participating in this discourse, the government will have to present very convincing arguments, ”says Anupam Chander, professor of law and technology at Georgetown University.

Any legal action could be very similar to the latest attempt to block TikTok. In 2020, the courts blocked Trump’s order to ban TikTok and the Chinese messaging app WeChat, ruling that the Trump administration failed to demonstrate enough security risk to restrict users’ freedom of speech.

Montana’s ban is based on the idea that the app poses a security risk, but experts say the state has no evidence to support this. “In order to justify the ban, Montana had to show that its privacy and security issues are real and that they cannot be addressed in narrower ways,” says Krishnan. “He didn’t.”

Krishnan adds that banning TikTok would set a dangerous precedent in how we regulate free speech online. “Restricting access to foreign media is something we usually associate with authoritarian regimes,” she says, “and we have to be very careful before giving such powers to our government.”

How does this fit into the broader TikTok ban trend?

Government officials in Montana are justifying the law as a way to combat data collection and misinformation on the platform, a stance that is becoming increasingly common. Congress recently introduced the RESTRICTION Act, which would allow the Secretary of Commerce to ban foreign technology and companies from operating in the US if they pose a threat to national security.

“The real issue here is the need for a national data protection law,” says Radsch, who says unregulated data collection is likely being done by tech companies both in the US and abroad.

The most effective solution would be to adopt legislation to regulate the collection and use of data. “Many things are national security risks of one level or another. We use the Internet all the time, where our day-to-day activities can be stolen by foreign players,” says Chander. “There is the issue of a national security threat, but it’s just important to remember that these risks are everywhere. It’s not just one application or one domain.”

Write Simmon Shah: simmone.shah@time.com.