John Legend Is The First Celebrity Voice Cameo For Google Assistant

John Legend is the First Celebrity Voice Cameo for Google Assistant

BY Evan Selleck

Evan Selleck

Evan's a lover of all things technology, and he's got a major soft spot for the mobile industry. Give him some time and he'd be more than happy to talk your ear off about all the new and shiny things....

All Articles by Evan Selleck

Published 3 Apr 2019

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Google teased celebrity voice cameos for Google Assistant quite a while ago, but only now is the feature rolling out with John Legend’s voice being the first.

Today, Google launched its first celebrity voice cameo, welcoming John Legend into the cameo family. Legend, who is a Grammy-winning artist, recorded only a small smattering of responses to select prompts. Legend will tell you the weather, can sing “Happy birthday” to you, and can answer some questions, too. However, this is just a cameo and Legend won’t be completely replacing the standard Google Assistant voices.

Here, you can see a video Google uploaded showing off Legend’s addition to Google Assistant:

https://youtu.be/AgHghcYqeto

To activate Legend’s voice on your Google Assistant-supported device, you can either say, “Hey, Google, talk like a Legend”, or you can head into Settings and select the new voice in the Assistant voice category. At the time of publication, Legend’s voice cameo is only available in U.S. English.

Google introduced six new voices, including Legend’s, at Google I/O 2018, so it’s likely we will start to see even more cameos in the near future.

What do you think of these voice cameos for Google Assistant?