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For years, Google has been promising me a high-performance voice assistant. I find that in 2024 it still can't understand "call mom" and "call my wife's name" u

For years, Google has been promising me a high-performance voice assistant. I find that in 2024 it still can't understand "call mom" and "call my wife's name" unless I'm in a perfectly silent environment. And it usually takes several tries. I'm not going to get carried away with technical announcements.

lxgr 2y ago
What's even worse for me is that it regularly "forgets" how to respond to queries that it could serve perfectly well before, especially related to smart home things. "Play <local radio station x> on living room stereo" has been hit and miss for my parents to the point where I regret setting them up with a Chromecast-supporting AV receiver and Google Nest speaker. They now just use the regular remote and listen to the station via FM.
- Beretta_Vexee 2y ago
  If you're unlucky enough to be bilingual, it's a complet joke. It's a real shame, because it makes this function useless for the people who need it most, those who can't type easily on a phone (visual challenges), or have difficulty transcribing names in a foreign language. It could help millions of elderly people stay independent a little longer. But no instead, they were trying to sell us generative AI and photo filter.
  - viraptor 2y ago
    The weird thing is that they just don't seem to care about improving it. WhisperX can process my speech just fine, but Google assistant can't. That's the lowest bar to clear and they don't need to invent any new tech for it - there's a number of solutions ready to go right now.
  - tumetab1 2y ago
    > If you're unlucky enough to be bilingual, it's a complet joke. Yep, it's just pain :D I'm native portuguese speaker but I navigate the english web. Hey siri, read notifications (portuguese name bad written) sent message <random portuguese read as english>. or: E aí siri, lê notificações (read notifications in portuguese) Notificação de Twitter, <english post read as portuguese>
    - lxgr 2y ago
      For me, this recently started working! Do you have both Portugese and English configured as languages in your iOS settings? I believe that that's what motivates Siri to try and interpret a message in the other language as well when reading notifications.
      - tumetab1 2y ago
        hummm, found the "read message" language setting... I doubt it it will work properly but will try Thanks :)
parthdesai 2y ago
Google's voice assistant is leaps and bounds better than next best thing available on a cell phone, Siri.
throitallaway 2y ago
Telling my Pixel 8's assistant to "set an alarm for 10 minutes" fails when it's not connected to the internet (after spinning for a few seconds.) That's crazy to me. I thought offline voice for basic things was working back in the Nexus days. I travel a lot and often find myself in areas with poor or no connectivity, and things "get a little freaky" in those scenarios. Even things like Google Maps (which has downloaded/offline mode) often fail or spin for 30 seconds. I think Google/Android engineers don't test these scenarios enough (or at all), and they're usually bathed in perfect connections.
- acdha 2y ago
  Siri seems to be better at the voice recognition in my experience but it has these crazy bugs where I see it perfectly transcribe the text, and then un-correct it into something completely different. Piping the raw text into a 90s Perl script would be better, and it amazes me that the same team can do on-device transcription so much better.
- ikr678 2y ago
  I dont want to use the voice assistant on my pixel but the function is so baked in that if I connect a headset, despite never setting the assistant up, it will interupt any music or playback after 15 seconds to tell me the assistant is ready now and there is no way to make that message go away or resume my media playing.
SamBam 2y ago
Yeah, I think the LLM for everything crazy is stupid, but I do wish there were a little more of it in the Google Assistant. Then I could finally say "Text Bob 'Home in 5'" and not have it reply "Sorry, I don't have a 'Home' number for Bob."
seydor 2y ago
I dont know, it works perfect for my (non-native) accent even in the noisy car environment with a super-slow car unit. It's really good
mvdtnz 2y ago
It's much much worse if you're trying to call someone without an Anglo-Saxon name too. It just outright refuses to call anyone I know with a Thai name, regardless of how I pronounce it.
- Beretta_Vexee 2y ago
  The same goes for French and Romanian, I call it Starwars name problem. You have to make some sort of strange variation like the name in Starwars so that the device recognises it.

lxgr 2y ago

What's even worse for me is that it regularly "forgets" how to respond to queries that it could serve perfectly well before, especially related to smart home things. "Play <local radio station x> on living room stereo" has been hit and miss for my parents to the point where I regret setting them up with a Chromecast-supporting AV receiver and Google Nest speaker. They now just use the regular remote and listen to the station via FM.

Beretta_Vexee 2y ago
If you're unlucky enough to be bilingual, it's a complet joke. It's a real shame, because it makes this function useless for the people who need it most, those who can't type easily on a phone (visual challenges), or have difficulty transcribing names in a foreign language. It could help millions of elderly people stay independent a little longer. But no instead, they were trying to sell us generative AI and photo filter.
- viraptor 2y ago
  The weird thing is that they just don't seem to care about improving it. WhisperX can process my speech just fine, but Google assistant can't. That's the lowest bar to clear and they don't need to invent any new tech for it - there's a number of solutions ready to go right now.
- tumetab1 2y ago
  > If you're unlucky enough to be bilingual, it's a complet joke. Yep, it's just pain :D I'm native portuguese speaker but I navigate the english web. Hey siri, read notifications (portuguese name bad written) sent message <random portuguese read as english>. or: E aí siri, lê notificações (read notifications in portuguese) Notificação de Twitter, <english post read as portuguese>
  - lxgr 2y ago
    For me, this recently started working! Do you have both Portugese and English configured as languages in your iOS settings? I believe that that's what motivates Siri to try and interpret a message in the other language as well when reading notifications.
    - tumetab1 2y ago
      hummm, found the "read message" language setting... I doubt it it will work properly but will try Thanks :)

parthdesai 2y ago

Google's voice assistant is leaps and bounds better than next best thing available on a cell phone, Siri.

throitallaway 2y ago

Telling my Pixel 8's assistant to "set an alarm for 10 minutes" fails when it's not connected to the internet (after spinning for a few seconds.) That's crazy to me. I thought offline voice for basic things was working back in the Nexus days. I travel a lot and often find myself in areas with poor or no connectivity, and things "get a little freaky" in those scenarios. Even things like Google Maps (which has downloaded/offline mode) often fail or spin for 30 seconds. I think Google/Android engineers don't test these scenarios enough (or at all), and they're usually bathed in perfect connections.

acdha 2y ago
Siri seems to be better at the voice recognition in my experience but it has these crazy bugs where I see it perfectly transcribe the text, and then un-correct it into something completely different. Piping the raw text into a 90s Perl script would be better, and it amazes me that the same team can do on-device transcription so much better.
ikr678 2y ago
I dont want to use the voice assistant on my pixel but the function is so baked in that if I connect a headset, despite never setting the assistant up, it will interupt any music or playback after 15 seconds to tell me the assistant is ready now and there is no way to make that message go away or resume my media playing.

SamBam 2y ago

Yeah, I think the LLM for everything crazy is stupid, but I do wish there were a little more of it in the Google Assistant. Then I could finally say "Text Bob 'Home in 5'" and not have it reply "Sorry, I don't have a 'Home' number for Bob."

seydor 2y ago

I dont know, it works perfect for my (non-native) accent even in the noisy car environment with a super-slow car unit. It's really good

mvdtnz 2y ago

It's much much worse if you're trying to call someone without an Anglo-Saxon name too. It just outright refuses to call anyone I know with a Thai name, regardless of how I pronounce it.

Beretta_Vexee 2y ago
The same goes for French and Romanian, I call it Starwars name problem. You have to make some sort of strange variation like the name in Starwars so that the device recognises it.