Google has continued to expand the roster of supported languages for its Google Assistant by adding in some new languages to the list: Spanish and Italian. That means if you are residing in countries where Spanish is the mother tongue such as Spain or Mexico, or just being spoken casually like in the United States, you can now start speaking to Google’s digital assistant by simply saying “OK Google, play some music,” for example. Meanwhile the Italian support for Google Assistant is available now in Italy, though it remains unknown whether the language support also applies to other territories where Italian is the native tongue.
Eugene Chow, Program Manager for Google Assistant at the Mountain View, California-based search giant, said in a blog post published on Wednesday that the goal of the expansion for the language support is to help people perform and complete their tasks regardless of the language they use to speak through the aid of Google Assistant. Last April, Google announced that the Actions on Google platform for the Google Assistant and future connected devices that use the voice-enabled artificial intelligence (AI) companion was set to expand the language support from American English to other languages in the future. Then most recently, Google Assistant was officially launched in Italy where Android users are now able to speak to the digital assistant in Italian, ask queries and get a fluent Italian reply in return. The personal assistant has learned Italian after Google worked with native speakers in the country in an effort to collect numerous samples of Italian speech as part of the process of incorporating support for the Italian language to Google Assistant.
Prior to that, at the end of 2016, the search giant made Google Assistant available in Hindi, which is the most widely-spoken language in India where Google is aiming to expand its user base in a major way. The language support for Spanish and Italian on Google Assistant is expected to hit Android devices that run the Android 6.0 Marshmallow version or higher over the next few weeks, so it pays to wait for the update to land on your device.