Google Chrome is doing something about websites that constantly ask users if they want to receive notifications by automatically disabling prompts based on a person’s history.
On the next release of its Chrome browser, Google will launch a machine learning model that will predict a user’s browsing preferences, the company said in a blog post Thursday. Google said the ML model’s predictions will be entirely on-device.
This will be part of Google’s goal to make web browsing a more uninterrupted experience. It ties into the company’s overarching goal of using AI to improve user experience and achieve “ambient computing,” or the idea where technology becomes so intuitive it blends into the background. Some of Google’s AI and ambient computing goals were outlined at its I/O developer’s summit last month.
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The quieter browsing experience Google will implement applies to notifications in general. People still have control to override predictions and can implement notifications if they’d like to.
By using ML, Google wants Chrome to adapt to a person’s usage in more specific ways. Google details an example in which a person is eating cereal in the morning, spoon in one hand, phone in the other. In this instance, a person might rather search with voice than with the on-screen keyboard. During breakfast, Chrome could automatically replace the search button to a microphone icon. Google said this feature can be customized manually once it launches.
Chrome will also get additional ML-based features. In Journeys, a Chrome feature that helps users retrace their online browsing history, ML can more easily help people pick up where they left off. ML in Chrome will also allow websites to automatically come up in a person’s preferred language more often.
Google declined to comment further on the story.
