Google’s new Allo chat client just got its second AI-based bot, which goes by the name Lucky, and is made to dole out fun GIF images based on user input. Using Lucky is fairly simple. When in a chat with somebody, simply type @Lucky, and let fly with whatever’s on your mind. Lucky will show you a GIF image in response to whatever you put in, but pulled from a random selection of semi-relevant GIF files. The GIFs are mostly pulled from Google searches of what you put in, with Lucky’s AI responsible for picking whatever GIF it thinks is the best to serve up at the moment. Everything from food to memes is in Lucky’s wheelhouse, and unless you’re being hyper-specific, you’re likely to get a different GIF file each time you summon the bot.
There are a few caveats to using Lucky, of course. For starters, it won’t be pulling up much in the way of NSFW content for you. On that note, though, be careful with what you type in, as content filtering is quite unpredictable at this point. It also may end up coming up empty on some searches because it either can’t find relevant content, or the content that it’s finding is not suitable to serve up for one reason or another. This facet of Lucky, obviously, will get better with time. When two people are chatting, they can both summon Lucky as much as they like by typing everything from a full sentence to a single word. As long as Lucky can find a suitable GIF, which will be more often than not, both parties will see the GIF in the message. Naturally, this means that you can now have GIF wars with your buddies without having to manually search out the GIF you want, letting Lucky do the hard part for you.
Google has not stated exactly how Lucky works yet, so there is no word on exactly how it determines which GIF to give you in a given situation, or whether it takes things like who you’re talking to or what the conversation has been like thus far into account. Lucky is already available for all Allo users, so if you happen to have Allo, give it a whirl. If you would just like to play around with Lucky, you can always open up an Allo chat with an SMS contact who does not have Allo.