If you don’t have any plans to get any of the new Google devices announced today (at least not anytime soon), if you have a gadget or smartphone that has Google Assistant, then you will be in for a treat. The voice digital assistant, which turns one today actually, gets more features with the latest update, including a new voice option for those in the US. Your Assistant will also now be able to help manage routines, make transactions, broadcast to Google Home devices in your house, explore Google Lens, and lost of other things.
If you don’t like your Google Assistant’s female voice, you now have the option to change it to a male voice, if you’re living in the US. You can also ask it to help manage your routines, like if you say “Ok Google, let’s go home”, it can automatically send a message to your spouse that you’re on your way home, then give you traffic info, and even play the last podcast you listened to. You can set up the various routines that you want Assistant to remember and execute when you say the key words.
You will also now be able to make Google Assistant make purchases for you. Initial partners include 1-800-Flowers, Applebee’s, Panera, and Ticketmaster. The update also brings a broadcast feature so that you can let all your Google Home devices at home broadcast the announcement, like “Ok Google, broadcast: dinner in 5 minutes”. If you have Nest devices at home, you can control your smart home through Assistant.
As previously noted, Assistant will also be part of the features of Google Pixel Buds and will also work with the new Pixelbook and the Pixelbook Pen. The early preview of Google Lens will be included in the new Pixel phones, and soon, it will also be available in Assistant so searching fro these items will be more conversational. So that’s a lot of new things available for Google Assistant, so update to the latest version on your devices.
SOURCE: Google
