text+ Provides Early Support to New Android Smart Reply Feature

Google’s ML Kit is expanding into Natural Language Processing with two new features: Language Identification and Smart Reply. text+ is proud to be among the first partners to integrate Smart Reply, bringing AI-powered response suggestions to our users.

Smart Reply: Faster Messaging with AI

A new feature popping up in messaging apps is providing the user with a selection of suggested responses, either as actions on a notification or inside the app itself. This can really help a user to quickly respond when they are busy or provide a handy way to initiate a longer message.

With the new Smart Reply API, the feature provides suggestions based on the last 10 messages in a conversation, although it still works if only one previous message is available. It is a stateless API that fully runs on-device, so no message history is kept in memory or sent to a server. Your conversations stay private.

We have worked closely with Google to ensure Smart Reply is ready for prime time, and text+ has now implemented in-app response suggestions with the latest version of our Android app.

How It Works Under the Hood

At the core of Smart Reply is a machine-learned model executed using TensorFlow Lite with a modern architecture based on SentencePiece text encoding and Transformer models.

Beyond the core suggestion model, Google added several important safeguards. A model detects sensitive topics to avoid making suggestions in response to profanity or in cases of personal tragedy or hardship. Language identification is also included, to ensure suggestions are not provided for languages the core model is not trained on. Smart Reply launched with English support first.

Language Identification

Alongside Smart Reply, ML Kit also introduced a Language Identification API. ML Kit recognizes text in 103 different languages and typically only requires a few words to make an accurate determination. It is fast as well, typically providing a response within 1 to 2 milliseconds across iOS and Android phones.

The language of a given text string is a subtle but helpful piece of information for features like spell checking, text translation, and Smart Reply itself.

What This Means for text+ Users

For text+ users on Android, Smart Reply means faster, more convenient messaging. When you receive a message, you will see intelligent response suggestions that you can tap to reply instantly, no typing required. The feature runs entirely on your device, so your privacy is fully protected.

This integration reflects our ongoing commitment to bringing the latest technology to our users and making communication as effortless as possible.