The Google Assistant will be faster and understand personal references and context.Google Assistant, the search giant’s voice-based intelligent assistant, will get faster and smarter with a clear focus on getting things done intuitively using personal references. The Google Assistant will understand personal references and context. So when you say “Hey Google, take me to mom’s house”, it knows where her location is and what the weather there is as well as the traffic en route. Of course this will depend on whether you have shared these personal preferences with the Assistant.
“It is not just for mom, but you can say your sister or whichever family member. It is even for temporary things like instead of asking to take you to your hotel in Mountain View Hilton Garden Inn, you can directly ask the Assistant to take to your hotel,” Austin Chang, Director, Product Management, Assistant at Google explained.
The personal information that users choose to share can be managed in the View tab of Settings along with activity history and privacy controls as well. The tab will expand to include additional personal details as well.
For users who do not want to save their personal information, personal reference will not work in the same way and a user will need to call out the full name or number in case they want to call a relative. For instance, their mom’s name or full address to reach a location.
Then there is also the customised suggestions for recipes, local events and podcasts rolling out for Nest Hub Max. “If my wife asked what should I cook for dinner, Assistant shows more Asian recipes because it is personalised based on your voice and knows what you like based on previous Searches,” Chang explained.
Google Assistant has also been updated with a new driving mode, centred around making navigation, calling and messaging while also offering access to media. The driving mode has personalised recommendations as well like dinner reservations or even plays a podcast from where they left it on their Nest Hub.
Also read | Google Search is getting AR and 3D models: Here’s what it means
Last year at I/O, Google Duplex was among the most talked about features, simply because of its ability to make dinner reservations or haircut appointments in a manner that sounded perfectly human. The feature, however, is only available to a small group of people in the US.
This year, Google Duplex-like technology has arrived for the mobile web. Duplex can perform complex tasks as filling up forms for car rentals without human help. Taking advantage of a user’s flight details, travel dates, and more personal information, it can fill out forms online. Of course, a human will need to confirm before going forward.
“It does not just help you fill the form, but it waits for human confirmation on things like whether you want a car seat. Additionally, for security and privacy reasons, you need to authenticate or enter the CVV number on your credit card. So, it combines all these technologies and helps you navigate complicated tasks in a simple, conversational effect. This is coming to Android phones later this year,” he said.
Google insists that its next-generation Assistant is ten times faster as 100GB of speech models have been brought down to under 1GB. The next-generation Google Assistant will be limited to Pixel 4 phones initially when they launch this fall.
Also read | Google demos car bookings by voice assistant at annual I/O event
Finally, it will be easier for users to stop their alarms or timer as they no longer need to say ‘Ok, Google’ for these actions. A simple ‘stop’ will do.
