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How Google Assistant is 10 times faster, is moving the world to voice first

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ET CONTRIBUTORSLast Updated: May 10, 2019, 11:18:00 AM IST

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Synopsis

The advancement of having Assistant on-device lets Google add live captions to videos and podcasts.

By Sreeraman Thiagarajan

Google Assistant, the smart voice bot, is available on over 1 billion devices across 80 languages and 30+ languages. It is moving the world from touch first to voice first.

At I/O 2019, Google's annual developer conference, Assistant demonstrated some next generation capabilities that makes it ten times faster than current avatar and almost works completely from mobile devices without depending much on cloud or remote servers.

Here's how it's poised to change the way we interact with devices:

On device Assistant for voice command: Traditionally voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistants have relied on their cloud computing prowess to make voice assistants work. When you speak to a voice bot, the audio is sent to remote servers for processing, leading to latency (delay in response). But Google has now changed this with bringing a Assistant capabilities on-device. They had to first reduce a 100 GB model to 0.5 GB model that resides within a device like upcoming Pixel.

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Personalization for a better Assistance experience: A butler knows you, your preferences, and everyone in your family. Google Assistant is trying to be one now. Devices like Google Home Hub or Next Hub with camera is getting the ability to detect who's in front of the device and show information relevant to them and give recommendations on known preferences. Google calls it as 'Picks for You'.

Assistant can also understand instructions like 'directions to mom's place' or 'remind me to buy flowers on my anniversary' leading to better personalized experience.

Google Assistant is also getting a 'Driving Mode.' Just say "Hey Google, Lets Drive" and Assistant helps you keep eyes on the road by getting you ask for directions or answer the phone with just voice commands.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks during the Google I/O 2019 keynote session at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California.

Live Captions: The advancement of having Assistant on-device lets Google add live captions to videos and podcasts. This nifty feature works even in airplane mode since the processing is now happening on the device.
To make this feature further socially useful, Google has Project Euphonia, which aims to help people with speech impairment to communicate better.

All this with better privacy: Sundar Pichai subtly called out how privacy should be available for everyone and not be a luxury good, a hint at Apple's premium prices product that provides better privacy. But this I/O, every talk and announcement explicitly touched upon how Google is now putting user privacy first. It is working hard to shake of the data-slurping imagery.

With Assistant, Google is on our phones, our bedroom, kitchen, car and every habitable place. But with on-device Assistant processing most information within a user's device, the privacy concerns are getting softer around the edges.

Augmenting Voice experience audio and Podcasts: Audio content makes Voice Assistants to be used frequently and for longer sessions. The word 'podcasts' were mentioned nearly a dozen time in the Keynote suggesting how critical it is now for Google.

Having quietly launched 'Google Podcasts' last June, it has now earned a spotlight with Google displaying Podcasts on search results, Assistant can play it on drive mode, and even has continuity from where you left off. The live captions are coming to Podcasts too, which means we can understand the content better even in noisy environments.

Voice reaching an inflection point was inevitable. With Assistant getting exponential advancements, there's no stopping the juggernaut now aiming to 'Building a more helpful Google for everyone'.

(The author is co-founder at Agrahyah Technologies and a listed Google Developer Expert. He was in California at the invitation of Google to attend the annual developer conference I/O 2019)

(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column are that of the writer. The facts and opinions expressed here do not reflect the views of www.economictimes.com.)

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