Google today announced some major improvements to Google Assistant fixing some of its major pain points. Besides adding support for six new voices, Google Assistant will soon come with Continued Conversations and Multiple Actions.
Continued Conversations will allow users to continue a conversation with Google Assistant without having to say “Hey Google” every single time. So, if you ask Google about tomorrow’s weather, you can follow this up with a reminder or other question without having to say “Hey Google” again.
With Multiple Actions, you will be able to say multiple commands to Assistant at the same time. So, for example, you will be able to ask Google Assistant to turn off the lights and play music at the same time.
Aimed at kids, Google Assistant will also compliment a user every time they add a “please” or “pretty please” to their request.
These features will be rolled out to Assistant over the coming months.
Google Assistant will also become more visual assistive in nature on your smartphones. It will utilize the display on your phone to display more information thereby making it more interactive in nature. When you try and control your smart home devices, a button will be displayed on the screen so that you can, for example, control the temperature of the cooling system at your home.
Even more impressive, thanks to Google Duplex, Google Assistant will be able to call shops and restaurants to book appointments for you. Yes, you read that right! This feature is not going to roll out now as Google is still working on perfecting it, though the demo shown at the keynote was definitely impressive. Initially, Google will roll Duplex out as an experiment, though it will only use it to update store timings which can be handy during weekends or on holidays when hundreds of thousands of people call to inquire about the business timing.
Finally, Google is bringing Assistant to 80 countries by the end of this year. It will be launching Google Home mini and Home to seven new countries this year: Denmark, Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and Sweden. It will also be launching Assistant in more regions and add support for more languages to it.
[Via Google]