Google very likely to rebrand Assistant to Bard ahead of release

Google is likely to change the Assistant moniker to Bard before launching the digital assistant later this year. Officially revealed in October during the Pixel 8 event, Assistant with Bard is expected to be released in 2024.

However, Google plans to drop “Assistant” from the name and simply call it “Bard.” The good people of 9to5google decompiled the latest version of the Google app and found that the app's home screen had been changed from “Hi! I am Bard's assistant” has “Hi! I am Bard.”

Not only that, but almost all mentions of Wizard with Bard have been replaced with just Bard. And since Google now calls Bard a digital assistant rather than another version of Assistant, it's clear the search giant is considering a name change before launch.

Credits – 9to5google

The problem is that Bard is still an “experimental AI assistant”, while Google Assistant is an established product that is constantly being improved. The decision to remove many cool features from Assistant last week was likely one of the steps Google needed to take before completely replacing Assistant with Bard.

This suggests that Bard won't come with all of the features that Assistant offers, although Google could promise to add many of them over the coming months. Obviously, it will be a while before Bard moves from “experimental” to stable status, but it seems Google is determined to make it work.