Google isn’t resting on its laurels with its chatty Assistant. Last year the Mountain View firm souped-up the helper with a swathe of additional functionality including the highly impressive Interpreter Mode designed to tear down language barriers by providing real-time translations. This week at CES Google announced four new features that’ll make their way to your smart speaker and smart display later this year. Here’s a complete rundown of each.
Household notes
If you’re the kind of person that creates Post-it Notes for every reminder and event you have coming up, Google has the ultimate solution that’ll not only save paper, but also ensure all the information you need is available at a glance.
Google has announced a new feature aptly titled “household notes” that’ll let you create a series of virtual Post-its on a compatible smart display – like the Nest Hub or Nest Hub Max.
The addition is as simple as it sounds, all you need to do is command the Assistant to create a note for you that’ll be viewable to any friends or family that peer at your smart display.
Discussing the new Assistant feature, Google said: “With household notes, you will soon be able to clear out the clutter of paper notes around the house and ensure notes are seen in one central location by creating digital sticky notes with the Assistant on your Smart Display.
“Anyone at home can create or view these notes without needing to sign in. For example, as you head out the door in the morning, you can leave a note informing other household members that you already fed your pet. Simply say, ‘Hey Google, leave a note that says I already fed Max breakfast’.”
Speed dial
Google is making it easier than ever to reach the people you’re closest to. The firm’s Google Home and Google Nest series already lets you make calls, but soon the latter will allow you to place certain contacts on “speed dial” with a new feature called household contacts.
Once you’ve created a list of household contacts, they’ll be accessible to anyone that wants to reach them via a dedicated menu screen. Tapping on the contact or uttering a command to the Google Assistant can be used to quickly get in touch with them.
Google explained: “You can also put your most important contacts on ‘speed dial’ with household contacts, so that anyone at home can quickly and easily make calls on your speakers and Smart Displays. Once set up, anyone can dial your neighbour Sarah by saying ‘hey Google, call Sarah’ or by tapping on Sarah’s name on your Smart Display’s household contacts list.”
https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZaqZcDOoi-8
New privacy features
Google is ramping up the privacy of the Assistant with two new commands that’ll help you keep tabs on what information of yours is being collected.
If you’re ever chatting away to family and friends and notice your Google Home or Google Nest device listening in unexpectedly, you can now say “hey Google, that wasn’t for you” and the device will immediately erase any audio recorded.
Additionally, you can also say “hey Google, are you saving my audio data?” to get a rundown of privacy controls you can enable to secure your data.
Scheduled Actions
Google is making it easier to schedule actions for individual smart home devices with a new feature duly titled “Scheduled Actions”. This’ll allow you to turn on or off specific equipment with a single voice command.
Announcing the new tool, Google said: “We also want to give you more granular control of your smart home devices. With a new feature called Scheduled Actions coming out later this year, you will be able to ask the Assistant to turn on/off or start/stop a compatible smart device at the time of your choosing.
“For example, you can say, ‘hey Google, run the coffee maker at 6am’ And from within the Google Home app, you can control more than 20 new devices, including AC units, air purifiers, bathtubs, coffee makers, vacuums and more, all from one place.”
Google has said each new feature detailed will arrive later this year, however a more precise launch date is unknown. Of course, Express.co.uk will alert you as soon as each one lands.
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