Google Assistant learns to talk more naturally

Continuing our roundup of Google I/O news stories from Mountain View, California we are now moving on to Google Assistant. The ever-faithful Google sidekick app is to receive an update that will make interacting with it feel much more natural than it has in the past.

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Google recognizes that starting every verbal interaction you have with your Google Assistant with the phrase Hey Google is not natural at all. In fact, it is one of the main reasons you would still call them verbal interactions and not conversations. To remedy this, and continue its mission to make Google Assistant better at talking back, Google is rolling out the Look and Talk feature to Nest Hub Max owners in the U.S. When enabled, the feature enables users to simply look at the screen to activate Google Assistant, meaning they can simply ask for whatever it is they need, whether that be to set a timer or for the details of a local bar or restaurant. All without the need to say Hay Google.

Google claims that to make the feature work takes six separate machine learning models to process over 100 audible and visual cues including proximity, head orientation, gaze, lip movement, and context awareness. The tech giant is also at pains to alleviate the privacy concerns that come with your little Google box constantly checking whether you are looking at it or not.

If you don’t have a Google Assistant device with a screen or camera, new natural conversation features will still come your way. Quick Phrases will let you skip the Hey Google moniker by personally enabling certain phrases that you say quite often. If you do a lot of cooking this could be as simple as setting a timer, but it could also activate more advanced features like turning smart devices on or off.

As always with these types of upgrades, they might not sound like much on their own. As they add up over time though, and you get used to using them and start taking them for granted their true value shines through. It is good that Google is developing Assistant to converse more naturally it allows us to see a future where we will be able to talk to our virtual assistants as naturally as if we were talking to a friend or relative. That future may shock or delight you, but then Google Assistant has been able to predict the future for a while now anyway. If that scares you, check out our guide to deleting everything Google knows about you.

Image via: Google