Big Changes Are Coming To Google Assistant

Mobile World Congress 2018 is up and running in Barcelona — and Google is already announcing the latest round of updates, improvements and enhancements it has planned for its smart AI, the Google Assistant.  Google had previously announced that it was rolling out support for 30 new languages for the AI last week; as of yesterday, 7 of those languages were online.

Consumers so motivated can now converse with their Google-powered AI in Hindi, Thai, Indonesian, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, and Dutch.  Google assistant now supports 15 languages total. स्वागत हे, ยินดีต้อนรับ, Selemat Datang, Velkommen, Välkommen and Welkom to the new arrivals.

According to AndroidAuthority, Google also announced that going forward its assistant will be better able to pair with third-party apps — care of the Android Link feature.  Android Link is designed to make make it easier for developers to create actions that connect to the assistant or tasks in their own app.  So, for example, using one app to book a reservation on Assistant will automatically populate one’s phone with all the relevant scheduling data.

Google has also rolled out askForPlace, an Assistant function that is designed to make location-based functions easier to create for developers by making it so that they do not need to develop new code. This is designed to make it easier to create apps like Uber, which actually require a lot of data input: starting point, destination, and selection of Uber ride. The new design will prevent developers from having to write new code to extract all that data.

Google has also built a “memory” function so that its Assistant can keep track of all the information that passes through it relating to other apps.  That means — back to the Uber ride example — if a customer asks to go to a location near their home, the system can reach back and determine which location they are asking for based on past interactions.