Apple might have started the virtual assistant game with Siri. However, we all know that it sucks when compared to Google’s Assistant. And with this upcoming update, Google plans to widen the lead.
In the Google I/O 2018 keynote, the company revealed that the Google Assistant will now have the ability to do human-like conversations. It practically makes the assistant smarter, so you can ask questions or commands like you’re asking it to a normal person.
This new feature is made possible by the tech giant’s new Google Duplex technology. The Google Assistant can comprehend fast speech, complex sentences, and different talking quirks that most traditional virtual assistants cannot understand.
With this update, you can ask it additional questions from the initial one without having the say “Hey, Google” every single time. You can just converse with it like what you do with a normal person.
Google also said that the Assistant can make phone calls and reservations for you — acting more like a true personal assistant than something virtual.
Related: The Best New Features of Android P
Say, you want a reservation from a restaurant that doesn’t have a web-based system, the Assistant will call that particular restaurant and make the reservation itself.
Other than this cool but honestly creepy new features, Google also announced other new features for the Assistant. For one, there’s Multiple Actions, which lets you ask different questions all at once.
Google is also adding six new voices on the Assistant with John Legend’s voice coming later this year.
The Multiple Actions feature is now available while Continued Conversation will arrive in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, Google Assistant’s ability to make calls will start a more rigorous testing in the next couple of months.