Google Allo Gets Hindi Assistant; Company Says the Highest Number of Allo App Users Are in India

Google, as promised, has started rolling out Hindi Assistant to its Allo instant messaging app in India. To recall, Google at its Make for India event in September had promised that Allo will receive Hindi Assistant later this year.

Apart from Hindi Assistant, Google's Allo app will now be able to include "Smart Reply" in Hindi language as well, with the help of machine learning. Google says that the new features will begin rolling out on Google Allo for Android and iOS users from Monday, and will be available on all devices over the "coming few days". The new feature is focused on bringing the non-English speakers online.

Google also announced that India has the highest number of Allo users. With the latest feature, Google Assistant in Allo will now understand and respond in Hindi. To start talking in Hindi inside Assistant, Allo users will have to say "Talk to me in Hindi", or they can also change the language preference setting on the device. Announcing the new Hindi addition to Allo, Google also claims that the app will understand text alongside images in Hindi using machine learning algorithms.

"Smart Reply will recognise the language you're chatting in and begin to show suggested responses in that language," says Google in a press statement.

Google Allo continues to show "Smart Reply" in English if users chat in the English language though when it detects Hindi, it will start showing suggestions in the language. Once again, this setting can be tweaked via your device's language settings.

Announcing the new Hindi addition, Amit Fulay, Group Product Manager, Google said, "Since its launch, Google Allo has received tremendous response, especially in India, which has one of the highest number of Google Allo users. The Google Assistant, in particular, is one of the most loved features in Google Allo - one in every 12 messages in group chats are messages to the Google Assistant. We are enthused by this and today's launch enables us to extend these features to the next millions of users in a language of their choice."