Actions on Google received support for British English, with the Alphabet-owned company taking to its official blog earlier this week to confirm that all Google Assistant apps are now being made available to users in the United Kingdom. The latest expansion of the service that Google has been promising for months encompasses every existing variant of the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) companion, from the service for Android smartphones and iPhones to the one supported by the Google Home smart speaker. The change is being rolled out to users in a gradual manner, though everyone in the United Kingdom should see the newly supported apps in their directories by the end of the week, the tech giant said, adding that users are still advised to take a number of steps to personalize their new tools as much as possible, consequently making them more efficient.
The Mountain View, California-based company recommends that users review their response text string and adjust them as necessary in an effort to make sure that their app is perfectly localized. Not all apps will have to be manually reviewed as a number of developers already made the necessary steps to optimize their offerings for users in the United Kingdom, Google said, specifically commending creators of Blinkist Minute, SongPop, and Akinator for doing so. Alphabet’s subsidiary also revealed that it added four text-to-speech (TTS) voices to its AI service as part of the latest update, with one of them being set by default to all British English speakers. Anyone looking to try out the other three alternatives can do so by navigating to the actions console of the platform where they can also switch back to one of the system’s American English TTS voices.
Google also called all of its developers to start creating localized experiences for British English speakers and establish a foothold in this new market while it’s still young and not highly competitive. The company now updated its developer documentation and supporting software to reflect the newly added support for Actions on Google in British English, adding that it’s keen to keep helping everyone who’s creating new experiences for its platform in the future.