Neural Network-Generated Illustrations in Allo

This is fucking dumb, and I am absolutely ok with this. The fact that we are able to do these &#x27;dumb&#x27; and silly applications is a good sign. It shows that the field has advanced to the point where it is cheap enough to do these &#x27;dumb&#x27; applications.<p>Not only that, but this &#x27;dumb&#x27; application has immediate value(gets more people to use google&#x27;s service and thus display ads to them). Because of the value these dumb applications have, they could help drive AI research and development of general purpose machine learning hardware.<p>Sometimes it&#x27;s ok to do &#x27;dumb&#x27; things.

The feature is technically interesting, but I don&#x27;t care about Allo. There are enough silly messaging apps out there, evolving in their own silos. I miss the days of the XMPP protocol.

&quot;Starting to roll out today&quot; - does anyone versed in traditional PR have a say in this new trend in slow roll-outs?<p>I can see how it makes sense from an engineering point of view but I just installed Allo to try it out and it hasn&#x27;t rolled out to me yet.<p>I&#x27;m rather unlikely to remember to try again in a few days&#x2F;weeks etc.<p>This has happened multiple times in similar scenarios. I dug out my Gear VR to try the new Oculus browser. I didn&#x27;t get it for 4 weeks (only a particular interest in WebVR kept me coming back to see if it was there).<p>Surely this is squandering good press and good will?

This actually looks pretty cool. Some initial thoughts:<p>- I have never used Allo or really even know what it is. I am downloading it now though.<p>- I hope it does more than just auto-create a Bitmoji character. I wonder how its going to distinguish itself from other avatar creating apps.

I&#x27;d try the H.R. Giger version.

Is anyone working on this for 3d avatars (like in game character creation&#x2F;customization except automatic)?

Has anybody actually tried it yet? I haven&#x27;t seen any results outside of this blog post.

that&#x27;s cool. Google always WOW people.

First I have to use a phone number to use an internet based chat system, now I should be excited about some comic figure? Allo - Are you out of your mind?

This is childish. Apple&#x27;s version of this works better, in real time, in FaceTime, because it&#x27;s above a threshold of kiddiness.