Find small talk difficult? Gboard may soon help

Google has been busy adding generative AI features to its many products and Gboard may soon join in the fun.

Gboard has received many updates over the past year. (Express image)

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Small talk is an essential skill for socialising and networking, but not everyone is good at it. Some people find it hard to come up with interesting and appropriate topics to start a conversation with someone they don’t know well. If this sounds familiar, you might be interested in a new feature that Google is working on for its Gboard keyboard app on Android.

Gboard is one of the most popular keyboard apps on Android, and it offers many features that make typing faster and easier. One of these features is Proofread, which checks your spelling and grammar and suggests corrections. It’s currently under development but it appears Google’s trying to expand its scope further with support for conversation starters, as spotted by AssembleDebug in the GappsMod Flags Telegram channel (via Android Police).

gboard-conversation-starters-wip

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To access them, you just need to tap on the Proofread button in Gboard when the message field is empty. You will see a list of topics that you can scroll through and choose from. These cover generic subjects like travel, music, news, sports, movies, food, coffee, politics, education, handcraft, sci-fi, and many more (30+ in total). Then, Gboard will generate a text that you can use to start the conversation.

For instance, if you select travel as a topic, Gboard might ask something like “Where would you like to go next?” or “What was your best travel experience?”. You can then copy and paste the text into your message and send it.

Conversation starters is still a hidden feature that requires some flags to be enabled, so it might not be available for everyone yet. But when it is, it could be a useful tool for people who struggle with small talk. It could also help you discover new things about your friends or acquaintances by introducing new topics that you might not have thought of before.