Bytes & Bolts Episode 6: New Google Assistant Is Almost Human
The Google Assistant almost replaced our tech and auto anchors on the show! Yes, it is getting pretty smart now.
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Video Editor: Ashish Maccune
In the sixth episode of Bytes & Bolts, our weekly take on hot topics in the tech and auto world, we focus on Smart Voice Assistants. Google held its I/O developer conference this week and so did Microsoft.
However, it was Google’s new assistant that stole the show, with its almost human-like interactions. Google CEO Sundar Pichai demonstrated the new assistant at I/O, where it made an actual phone call to a salon on behalf of the owner, and interacted with the salon personnel in an almost human-like manner, complete with ‘umms’ and ‘ahs’!
This is a feature called Google Duplex, which will be rolling out in the next few months. It’s scary, because one would never be able to tell if one is speaking to a bot or a human henceforth.
We also got the Google Assistant on the show, almost replacing Roshun. And Cyrus got it to fart a lot! (Yes, it does that.) But it sings better than him.
Some of the other highlights from Google’s I/O was that Assistant will now come with six new voices and accents. These will roll out in the next few weeks. Google also rolled out ‘Continued Conversation’, where you don’t need to keep saying the wake word – Hey Google or Okay Google – each time you interact with the Assistant.
Google will soon be rolling out smart displays as well, which are assistants with a screen that will compete with Amazon’s Echo Show and Echo Spot. Other functionalities that will soon come to Google Assistant, across devices, includes food ordering services — where the assistant can keep track of your orders and make suggestions based on your preferences.
Oh, and yeah, it now responds to Hey Googoo too!
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