Google Assistant may not be the first intelligent digital assistant ever created, but it sure sounds like the most human one so far. It’s been programmed to understand contextual questions and answer just like a human would. For example, if you’d ask it something along the lines of “when was the last presidential debate” and it answers that it was yesterday at 9 PM in St. Louis, you could simply ask “who participated” and it would recall the last answer it gave and correctly state the names of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. This is something that Amazon’s Alexa simply can’t do (yet) and it makes Google Assistant stand out. There’s less chance of going back and forth with Google’s creation as it acts like more than just a voice assistant. It acts like the voice assistant of the future we’ve all been envisioning for years. It understands human speech patterns and tries to mimic them in its answers.
All of this wouldn’t be possible without a lot of hard-working coders but they’re not the only people who ought to take credit for this intelligent voice-controlled digital assistant. Namely, Business Insider reports that Google wanted to make its creation more personable so it hired a team of writers made out of former Pixar and The Onion employees who helped mold Assistant’s answers and worked on giving it a recognizable personality that it can exhibit if its owner allows him to. We’ve already seen that Google Assistant is capable of being both funny and sassy while speaking to it via—or maybe better said, within—Google Allo as some hilarious conversations ensued.
Apart from the aforementioned messaging app, the Assistant will also soon be available in three more forms as the Google Home speaker and Google Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones are just around the corner. All three will be infused with this personable assistant designed to make our lives easier without constantly feeling like talking to a robot. Business Insider reports that Google’s ultimate goal is to enable scenarios in which users can build an emotional connection with the Assistant. While it remains to be seen whether that actually ends up happening, one thing is for sure – Google Assistant is a big part of the company’s latest hardware initiative and it has the potential to be a major selling feature of all upcoming consumer electronics made by Google.