SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 14 - Alphabet's Google on

Thursday released a smartphone app for its artificial

intelligence chatbot on Apple's ( AAPL ) App Store that

introduced the latest generation of its voice assistant to the

popular mobile operating system.

The new Gemini app will include Gemini Live, a voice-based

feature that allows users to have natural conversations with the

chatbot. Apple ( AAPL ) has already said it will incorporate OpenAI's

ChatGPT into a refreshed version of its voice assistant, Siri.

"It's great for when you want to practice for an upcoming

interview, ask for advice on things to do in a new city, or

brainstorm and develop creative ideas," Brian Marquardt, a

senior director of product management at Google, said in a

statement.

Gemini is Google's answer to ChatGPT, the popular application

developed by Microsoft ( MSFT )-backed OpenAI. Google initially

launched it in February 2023 under the name Bard, and has since

added more capabilities while weathering controversies.

Google announced the voice feature during an August event and

first added it to phones powered by its own mobile operating

system, Android.

Technical advances in AI spurred by the rise of large

language models have fostered the emergence of a new generation

of voice assistants far more capable than Amazon's ( AMZN ) Alexa

, Apple's ( AAPL ) Siri and Google Assistant.

Google's Gemini Live is a replacement of Assistant, an

eight-year-old product built using older AI technology.

Hundreds of employees on the Voice Assistant team were laid off

in January as part of a reorganization to "become more

efficient," a company spokesperson said at the time.

Google has since consolidated further. Last month it folded the

Gemini app team into DeepMind, its AI research lab, in a move

that CEO Sundar Pichai also attributed to increasing efficiency.

DeepMind is among the research organizations implementing new

techniques to improve AI models as the traditional approach of

building ever-bigger models has run in to unexpected delays and

challenges, Reuters reported this week.