Google created its own mobile game for WeChat, China's biggest social media app which is owned by Chinese giant mobile company Tencent.
In his blog post, Google product manager Chris Tam said that Google created its Al software for mobile phones. Al mobile game correctly identifies what is the image or the drawing in the mobile phone (WeChat) before the time runs out. As the game progresses, the drawings get more complicated.
According to Tam, the Al mobile game aims to give people "the opportunity to experience just how natural AI-powered interactions can now be."
Google created an applet dubbed as "Guess the Sketch" or "Caihua Xiaoge" in China. It embeds with WeChat, introducing to the mobile users the AI-computer vision technology. In the "Guess the Sketch," users are asked to draw simple things on the smartphone. The player can get points by doing such and will advance to the next round if the mobile game app can recognize the drawing within 20 seconds.
Google's very own Google Play is banned in China, adversely affecting the delivery of services for YouTube, Gmail and Google Maps. Only a few Google apps are allowed to enter China's market and this includes Google Translate and Files Go. These apps, however, are only available through third-party app stores run by Chinese mobile companies Huawei and Xiaomi.
Some U.S. lawmakers, however, expressed concern over Google's tie-up with Chinese mobile companies such as Huawei and Tencent.
"We urge you to reconsider Google's partnership with Huawei, particularly since your company recently refused to renew a key research partnership, Project Maven, with the Department of Defense. This project uses artificial intelligence to improve the accuracy of U.S. military targeting, not least to reduce civilian casualties," said in the letter addressed by the U.S. lawmakers to Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
The U.S. government believes that Huawei is working or operating on behalf of the Chinese government.
"While we regret that Google did not want to continue a long and fruitful tradition of collaboration between the military and technology companies, we are even more disappointed that Google apparently is more willing to support the Chinese Communist Party than the U.S. military," the letter cited.
In February 2018, U.S. intelligence officials warned its citizens to buy Huawei products, especially mobile phones, not to buy Huawei mobile phones because these could be used in spying the users.
