Google is always looking into new ways to improve their Assistant by applying new AI and machine learning technologies to it. The latest update to the Assistant focuses around three functionalities – recognizing and pronouncing names better, understanding the context when setting alarms and timers, and improved natural conversation skills.
If you use the Assistant frequently, you must have come across an instance where the Assistant butchers the pronunciation name of someone you know. This can finally change as users will soon be able to teach Google the pronunciation of particular names in your contact list. Once learnt, the Assistant can better recognize the name when a request is made and pronounce it like how it should sound.
Using a technology called BERT, the Google Assistant can understand the context of a new request in relation to previous requests, which is especially useful when setting up multiple timers or alarms. For example, when cancelling a particular alarm when multiple are set, users can simply say, “Cancel my second alarm”, and the Assistant will understand which alarm the user is talking about and cancel the correct one.
Google also applied BERT to the general working of the Assistant, which will improve its conversational capabilities overall. The Assistant can now use previous interactions with the user, understand what is displayed on screen and then respond to a follow-up request.