Google Assistant to become 10 times faster, gets a slew of new features

Google Assistant has been making our lives simple since it was unveiled first by the technology giant. Yesterday at Google I/O 2019, the company has announced several changes to its digital assistant that will make it even more useful to users. The features are expected to make their way to Made by Google devices in the next few weeks or months.

The technology giant has given us the first look at the next-generation Google Assistant, Assistant driving more, Assistant support in Waze among other features. In addition to this, Google has also said that it will be bringing the Assistant’s Duplex feature to the Web so that users can get help to complete various tasks online.

The next-generation Google Assistant will not rely on the company’s data centres for its computing needs. Instead, it will bring speech recognition and language understanding models to users’ smartphones to make sure that things remain extremely fast. The technology giant has elaborated in a blog post that the next-generation Google Assistant will have the ability to process what users say in real-time and respond up to 10 times faster than it does right now.

Google said, “You can multitask across apps—so creating a calendar invite, finding and sharing a photo with your friends, or dictating an email is faster than ever before. And with Continued Conversation, you can make several requests in a row without having to say “Hey Google” each time.”

The company has said that the next-generation Google Assistant will be available on new Pixel smartphones sometime later this year. However, as of now, there is no word about when it will come to other Android handsets.

Another feature that will be coming to Assistant is Personal References, which enables users to ask queries like, “What’s the weather like at mom’s house this weekend?” The Assistant will then recognise what “mom’s house” means, and give the answer to the question accordingly.

Speaking about the feature, Google said, “For a digital assistant to be helpful, it needs to understand the people, places and events that are important to you. In the coming months, the Assistant will be able to better understand references to all of these through Personal References.”

In addition to this, Google is getting a ‘Picks for you’ feature in Assistant on smart displays. As the name suggests, the feature will provide personalised suggestions to the user about recipes, podcasts and more. Popular navigation app Waze will also be getting support for Assistant in the next few weeks.

Google is also adding a driving more that will give users personalised suggestions and will be available starting this summer on Android smartphones. Another useful feature that is coming to Assistant is remote vehicle control. As the name suggests, with this, owners will be able to control their vehicles remotely.

Other than this, Google will bring the Duplex feature on Web so that it can make car or movie ticket bookings for users. It will be coming to Web later this year in the Us and UK on Android phones.