Update: Google officially announces Assistant for iOS devices

Update, May 17: During the Google IO keynote today, Google just confirmed that Assistant will hit iPhone and other iOS devices in the coming days.

Original post, May 15: Google Assistant may be expanding its reach to another operating system. A new report says that Google’s voice command digital assistant will be coming “soon” to Apple’s iOS. The official reveal could come this week as part of the 2017 Google I/O developer conference.

The report comes from Android Police, citing unnamed sources. The story didn’t have much in the way of details about the iOS version of Google Assistant, but it did say that it will “likely” combine its voice command features with the chat functions found on the Google Allo version of Assistant.

Google first launched Google Assistant in October 2016 with the launch of Android 7.0 Nougat and its Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones, and it was also included with its Google Home connected speaker. Assistant has since expanded its reach to more devices, including all Android Marshmallow and Nougat smartphones. It is also coming to some Android TV devices and earlier today, the company confirmed that it will be built into Android for some car infotainment systems.  Oddly, the company confirmed a few weeks ago that Google Assistant would not be enabled for Android tablets.

If this story is accurate, it will be very interesting to see how Google Assistant works on Apple’s iPhone, which already has its own Siri voice assistant built into iOS. Microsoft has also launched a version of its own digital assistant, Cortana, for both iOS and Android.

Stay tuned as we will have lots more first-hand reports of Google’s big announcements as part of our coverage of Google I/O 2017 this week, starting on Wednesday, May 17.