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The Google Assistant is going global
- lgleason 9y agoGiven how well cough the assistant has been able to cope with accents in English (it hasn't very well at all) it will be interesting to see how well this works in practice.
- AntonyGarand 9y agoThat's a surprise for me, I'm not a native speaker and in both French and English, it has done a great job at understanding my accents.
- robteix 9y agoSame here. I find the Google Assistant's voice recognition very near perfect. I'm not a native english speaker but I would think that would make it harder than easier.
- whoisjuan 9y agoAccents are a hard problem in voice recognition. If your accent is weirdly unique (like mine) there's already a deviation from the baseline data used to train those models. That being said, I feel both G.Assistant, and Alexa both interpret what I'm saying most of the times. In contrast, Siri rarely understands me well. When I set up reminders, 95% of the times Siri fails to comprehend me correctly. I don't know what they are doing at Apple, but you would think they would have nailed this already (with the millions of Siri capable devices they have sold already).
- ridgeguy 9y agoA question from ignorance (I don't have any of these devices), but couldn't the weirdly unique accent problem be solved by reading a list of standard vocabulary words a few times to the device while training for accuracy?
- ariwilson 9y agoWhat do accents have to do with foreign language recognition?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- theDoug 9y agoAlbeit from May last year, I thought this video showed capability with accents in English quite well compared to other smart devices: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNx0huL9qsQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNx0huL9qsQ Happy to hear about more recent tests or counter examples! (Disclosure: I work at Google, my Google Home tends to get my Canadian English pretty well)
- bokertov 9y agoWill there ever be Chinese support?
- eximius 9y agoGoogle isn't neglecting the Chinese. Chinese is just brutal for literally everything. It's hard for humans, it's hard for machines, it's hard for humans designing for machines for use by humans. It's hard to read, write, hear, speak, represent. Voice UX for English, where linguists and AI and money are being thrown, is still very much in its infancy. Let's give them a little time.
- danimal88 9y agoI suspect this is less about difficulty and more about markets. Simply put, my guess is that there is a decent reliance on google services which are banned in China.
- fbdjskajxb 9y agoEven if you exclude China, I believe Chinese is still a top-30 language.
- criley2 9y agoThat doesn't sound impressive?
- fbdjskajxb 9y agoWe’re all talking about an announcement that Google Assistant is supporting over 30 languages.
- eximius 9y agoThat may deprioritize it, but it is still the third most spoken language in the US[1]. Yes, it is less important than many European languages, but it will still be important even if you completely ignore China. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_United_States
- mszcz 9y agoFinally. I'm Polish and I've always felt that my language / location has been treated as a second class citizen since ever. Only way for me to use Google Assistant was either by switching to all English or by using some gutted version when I'm speaking Polish.
- make3 9y ago"We’re also making the Assistant multilingual later this year, so families or individuals that speak more than one language can speak naturally to the Assistant." As a French Canadian who changes languages multiple times a day and who refers to things in both languages constantly, this is really great.
- steeve 9y agoWhile this is great, as a french Google Home owner, Google Assistant is way more powerful in English than in French. The gap is so big and I haven't seen it improve in the last year... For instance, multi-user as yet to come to non-English languages, and it's been out for almost a year.
- ehsankia 9y agoWhile not exactly what you're asking for, they do mention in the article Multilingual support. So you'll be able to use it in both French and English. This may solve some problems you're speaking of.
- suyash 9y agoFinally it will be nice to have Google Assistant in Hindi on Google Home.
- dingo_bat 9y agoIt will feel weird though :) I have never interacted with any computer/phone in Hindi.
- midhir 9y agoI was going to troll and ask would it support Gaeilge but since it still thinks "Turn the volume down" in a Belfast accent means turn it up max, I doubt it :) Not to mention getting it to play Malfeitor by Watain on Spotify... I actually bought my Google Home in Belfast and brought it to Dublin because they're still to get in the Republic of Ireland. Yet it seems to find the southern accent easier and any location based stuff I've used it for here works fine. Still feels like magic sometimes.
- ArmandGrillet 9y agoHaving a multilingual assistant is gonna be so useful, happy to see that feature coming this year. The only thing I still miss to use the assistant all day long is offline routines. I put my phone on flight mode before going to bed and having the possibility to say "OK Google, wake up" to enable Wi-Fi and have the Google assistant telling me about the emails I've received during the night would be great.
- kwijibob 9y agoI really hope Google Assistant succeeds. I am totally embedded in the Android/Gmail/GSuite ecosystem. I want it to succeed. I need it to succeed. However so far Google voice assistant hasn't worked great for me. Most of the time it gets it wrong. It is really frustrating while driving. I am a native English speaker, albeit Australian. I've made this comment before - it is astounding that Google have banked their entire reputation on people getting a positive experience through saying "Ok Google". Amazon have Alexa. Apple have Siri. Microsoft have Cortana. If any of those become a negative experience overall, they can just invent a new AI with a new name. But at the moment, saying "Ok Google" ends with me having an experience of frustration or disappointment. This is a big risk with your brand?! You can breakup with Siri and stay with Apple. It's going to take an amazing Google Assistant to over come the hundreds of wasted voice experiences I have suffered thus far. Good luck, Google.
- mstade 9y agoDon’t worry, in about six to twelve months Google will release at least one product to competes with their own. With a little luck it’s better. Of course they’ll just scrap it about six to eight months after that, but it’ll be fun while it lasts!
- sorenjan 9y agoThe "ok Google" phrase originates from Google Glass, which was mainly made to give Google positive PR. The activation phrase was apparently thought up by the woman who dated Hugo Barra when he was an Android executive, and later (and overlapping) had an affair with Sergey Brin. Maybe that had something to do with it gaining traction. I also think Google's original goal was to make their assistant more objective than Siri, without distracting personality. You were interacting with Google, not some anthropomorphic AI. They seem to have changed that, and the assistant now makes jokes and sings, so by now it does feel a bit odd that it doesn't have its own name like the competitors. But Google isn't really that great at marketing.
- username223 9y ago> The activation phrase was apparently thought up by the woman who dated Hugo Barra when he was an Android executive, and later (and overlapping) had an affair with Sergey Brin... I also think Google's original goal was to make their assistant more objective than Siri, without distracting personality. This is simultaneously hilarious and diseased.
- parrellel 9y ago...and there's no easy way to get rid of the damn thing. Some of us really don't want voice controls and always on microphones.
- ggm 9y agoI'm glad they've gone for global availability, but I'm still not a fan in my own personal sense for using this. I cannot entirely rationalise my non-latent hostility, I just know experientially I don't want an assistant active on any device I own, or have deployed near me. (I have had it turned on, I did not like the experience of accidental engagement, or sweeping its sound-captures when I tested what it had found) Ubiquitously on, sound-tasting devices do not fill me with glee.
- tibu 9y ago'ensure “Ok Google" and "Hey Google" work when the screen is off, and build other custom integrations.' No comment
- TeMPOraL 9y agoThat's IMO a necessary feature if you buy into the entire concept of voice interfaces. When I have my phone in my hands (so that I can turn the screen on), I have much better interfaces available than voice.
- pishpash 9y agoThis is the potential Echo killer. Let's see if it works out for them.
- nfriedly 9y agoHow long before I can say "Alexa ask Google to..." :P
- pjmlp 9y agoCurious to see if they remember Portuguese is also spoken in Europe, Africa and Asia, and isn't quite the same as in Brazil.
- rcarmo 9y agoThe search and advertising teams know that. The voice folk... Not that much, from my experience with their APIs over the past year. This is actually quite a significant problem across the board, since Brazilian Portuguese keeps drifting apart in both formal and informal vocabulary and grammar. They pretty much walked all over the language accords of the past couple of decades (both academic and governmental), and some of the more strait-laced linguists in the Continent wanted to classify it as a creole (partly to annoy their counterparts in Brazil).
- m-p-3 9y agoAs a multilingual person who speaks two languages on a daily basis, being able to interact through the language of my choice seamlessly is something I'm really looking forward to.
- cageface 9y agoCurrently on Android in order to use assistant at all I have to allow Google to record everywhere I go, every app I launch on my phone, and every web search I make on any logged in device. This is way more of my privacy I’m than I’m willing to give up. So until Google allows me to use assistant with some or all of these turned off, even if it reduces its effectiveness, Google assistant is turned off on all my devices.
- ENGNR 9y ago100% agree, it's unacceptable that it requires so many privileges when they're positioning it as a key UI for the whole Android experience. I think the dev community will start looking at hard forks as the new 'true' path rather than Nexus/Pixel if they continue down this path. It's already prevented me from buying the new pixel, what's the point of having the latest vanilla Android if it's going to spy on you anyway The best way to let them know is to open the Google app, open the menu and choose 'Send Feedback'
- tootie 9y agoDo we have any data on the size of this market? I've never found any assistant to be useful and haven't heard anyone else ever say they used one. This still feels like a massive dead-end to me.