Google Assistant has just gained a CNBC conversational app called @CNBC, and users can interact with by simply activating the Google Assistant trigger word and asking to talk to CNBC about the news, markets, or business world. Much like Google Assistant will converse with you about various queries or complete actions for you upon request, the CNBC conversational app will read back bits of news highlights to you if you ask it about the latest news, reading the highlights from the most recent story to you, but then following that up by asking you which story you’d like to know more about. From here, you can then scroll through a carousel list of different stories, tap on one, and then wait for CNBC to dive more into it. Additionally, you don’t actually have to tap on one of the topics as you can also speak which story you want to hear more information about so you can keep things hands-free if you need to.
With Google Assistant now being available on iOS in addition to Android the CNBC conversational app for Google Assistant is also available on the iOS platform. For Android users, phones that run on Android 6.0 Marshmallow and above which have Google Assistant built-in will be able to use the new conversational app, which also means that any future devices that have Google Assistant will also have the ability to pull up the app and ask it about news.
@CNBC is already live so users who routinely get their news from CNBC will be able to access it right now if they wish, and with Google Assistant gaining typing support users will soon be able to bring it up by typing the trigger words for it instead of having to speak, which should be useful in times where users might be in public and would rather not bother others around them. While the regular news topics are read off by a male voice with a slightly robotic tone, the business news and markets-related information is read off to the user by Bob Pisani, the CNBC Radio and On-Air Stocks Editor, so it sounds more like you’re listening to a podcast then conversing with a digital assistant, at least for this portion of the conversational app. If you have a device with Google Assistant you can check the app out right now. This also follows the CNBC conversation actions for Google Assistant on Google Home that was launched last year.