Silicon Valley’s Artificial Intelligence Marathon Is On

Artificial intelligence. Chatbots. Messaging. Sound familiar?

These were some of the themes that Google brought up at its annual developer conference on Wednesday. At the event, the Silicon Valley company introduced an Internet-connected speaker called Google Home that is powered by A.I. and a new messaging app called Allo, among other things.

These are also some of the very same topics that have come up at developer conferences held by Microsoft and Facebook this year. In March, Microsoft spent time talking about A.I. and bots, which are the pieces of software that can be used to produce new methods of interaction with computers, like chat interfaces. A month later, Facebook said it was opening up its Messenger messaging app so developers could create chatbots for the service.

If there’s a certain sameness to it all, it illustrates how tech behemoths are all moving into an age of A.I. Microsoft, Google, Amazon and others are all racing to become the go-to company for A.I., betting that whoever wins will have the advantage in a technology that is permeating more and more software programs and hardware products.