Google Assistant owns the show at I/O 2018

Google Assistant dominated the day at I/O with the most exciting changes to the Assistant ever; this is very exciting for those of us who love using the Assistant.

For starters, the Assistant is getting some new voices (6 to be precise) including wait for it...John Legend himself. These new voices will be available in the next few months, but honestly, who isn’t excited about the possibility of John Legend being their assistant. In addition, the Assistant is about to get much more natural with Continued Conversation; basically, you will not need to say “Hey Google” every time after the first time. Also, a feature called Multiple Actions will allow you to ask follow-up actions in threaded conversation rather than ask individual requests every time with a new hot word prompt. If you wondered, yes these features are nearly identical to what Amazon introduced with Alexa not long ago.

Along with some big changes under the hood, Assistant is about to find some new home styles with the introduction of smart displays with Google Assistant. Much like the Echo Show, the displays will have screens, navigated by voice, that can run apps such as YouTube TV and YouTube. This will allow these little devices to become like small interactive TVs for the kitchen or bathroom (or anywhere else you would like to have a small smart TV). They will support video calling (Duo perhaps?), Google Maps, and other apps, and Lenovo, JBL, and LG have already announced devices for the upcoming months.

By far the most exciting and incredible progress made with the Assistant is the ability to become a real, practical assistant. Within the Assistant, you can now ask to make a call to confirm appointments (hair in the demo). The Assistant will then call on your behalf, schedule/confirm appointment, and then put it in the Calendar. According to Pichai, the Assistant will handle interaction gracefully including asking wait times and other relevant information. The voice was so much more natural than the standard Assistant interaction that the live human being on the other line could genuinely not tell they were speaking to a robot. While I will not even begin to delve in to any possibly ethical dilemmas with this technology, the whole thing seems oddly dystopian while also incredibly amazing and useful.

The Assistant remains the greatest and most useful digital assistant in the world (my opinion of course). The incredible advances that Google has already made with the Assistant, as well as the changes on the horizon, make Siri, Alexa, Cortana, and Bixby look very low-tech in comparison.

P.S. The voice for Google Assistant was originally named Holly, and that was just mind-blowing to hear.