Google has announced some exciting new improvements coming to Google Home gadgets later this summer. First up, the chatty Google Assistant is getting a speed boost, which Google says will make interactions faster – allowing you get the answer, switch on the light, or play the song you asked for …and then get back to your day a little quicker. Google says it’s working to improve the accuracy of its responses all the time. Most recently, the search firm added responses to questions around the Black Lives Matter movement and a pretty damning response to anyone who asked Google Assistant about the All Lives Matter retort often used by those protesting against the anti-racism cause.
The biggest changes will be seen by those with Google Assistant-enabled smart displays, like the Nest Hub, Nest Hub Max, Lenovo Smart Clock with Google Assistant, and more. Google is bringing AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) to these smart home gadgets, so you’ll be able to read articles on the screens –if you really want to.
Smart Displays powered by the Google Assistant can already provide news content via YouTube clips or audio excerpts. The Google Assistant has been able to read out portions from Wikipedia and other web pages, but now it will be able to read from an AMP article. If you want to hear more, Google Assistant will be able to beam the entire article to your phone.
After all, whether you’d want to read news articles, like this one, on a Google Nest Hub, or Lenovo Smart Clock doesn’t seen to be that likely. But if there’s a breaking news story that you’re desperate to learn about – and can’t find your phone, tablet or PC – it could be handy.
Announcing the improvement in a new blogpost, Google says: “When people ask the Google Assistant — ‘Hey Google, what’s the latest news on NASA?’, the Google Assistant responds with an excerpt from a news article and the name of the news organization. Then the Google Assistant asks if the user would like to hear another news article and also sends the relevant links to the user’s mobile device.”
Google has also announced a slew of smaller improvements and tweaks.
Home Storage is a new feature designed to allow developers to store details about individual user’s interactions with a communal smart display. So, if a few different family members are playing a game on the Nest Hub in the living room, the smart home gadget will be able to keep tabs on everyone’s progress – so they’ll be able to resume exactly where they left off.
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Improvements to the Media APIs should make pausing and resuming podcasts and music around the home more reliable too. New tools to make it easier for developers to create new interactions have also been announced by Google.
The Mountain View-based company says these tweaks will be rolling out “later this summer,” so there’s not long to wait.
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