Virtual assistants are great little things in their own way. If you can get past the obvious privacy issues, you can take advantage of the added utility they can add to the home. The privacy issue is not a small one, however. It rears its head every time you, or even a character on the TV or in a movie, accidentally activates your virtual assistant by saying the activation phrase or something sounding similar to it. Unfortunately, on top of all that, sometimes those accidental activations can occur at inopportune moments, such as when you are in the middle of a virtual meeting. Well, Google is now updating Google Assistant to prevent it from interrupting meetings in this way. Let’s check it out.
Google has announced details of an update that is more focused on enterprise users than personal users at home. The update will affect Google Meet hardware devices and will block the “Hey Google” activation phrase from kicking in during meetings and in the 10 minutes running up to new meetings. The reasoning behind the update is to prevent accidental activation during meetings.
Interestingly, Google has been working hard to incorporate the “Hey Google” activation phrase as a way an easy and convenient way to join meetings but it has been having unintended consequences. Users have been reporting to users that it has been unintentionally triggering Google Assistant during meetings and disturbing proceedings.
Unfortunately for users who enjoyed the added accessibility offered by asking Google to add you to meetings with your voice, there is no mention in the Google Workspace Updates blog post announcing the update, about any sort of alternative way of accessing your meetings. It seems that Google is purely concentrating on cutting out interruptions to meetings with this update.
In other recent Google Assistant News, the virtual assistant has been getting a natural language upgrade that should improve the conversations you have with it.
