Google Assistant to Get Major Speech, Contextual Improvements and New Features

Google plans to further improve the core of Google Assistant, it said, as the AI-powered virtual assistants gain more ground and the space gets more competitive. At its developer event Google Developer Days (GDD) Europe, the company made the announcement and teased a host of new functionalities that are in the pipeline for its virtual assistant service.

An executive with the company said Google Assistant can now recognise speech much more efficiently, even in noisy environments. It is also getting much faster at decoding the commands, the executive said.

One such example, another executive shared, was being able to describe the event that occurred in a movie - in the most vague terms - and Google Assistant still being able to figure out the name of the title you're looking for.

Google is also planning an improved version of translation service, which is capable to handling a bunch of statements provided in foreign language, and it can tell you what those means in the language you prefer.

Among improved features include being able to store more of your preferences. At present, Google lets you add location and your favourite sport team, for instance. But soon, you will also be able to add things like weather. Based on preferences, Google is then able to answer your contextual questions that concern those parameters.

Google is also able to look at your recent searches, and take into consideration in answering your queries as well. Say you recently searched for a celebrity. Next time even when you say only the last name of that person, and ask their pictures to be shown, Google Assistant would know whom you're referring to.

The company also demonstrated an upcoming feature of Lens, an app that is able to bring relevant information what your camera sees, which enables it to say looks at cash and do real-time conversation into different currency.

So how soon could you expect these improvements to show up on your phone or smart-speaker? The company didn't share that. But given it has already demonstrated these capabilities, one could expect the roll-out in very near future.