Google Assistant just got three big upgrades — and you can try them now

Google Assistant is already pretty clever, but information technology's getting a agglomeration of updates to brand information technology fifty-fifty smarter — including i that will teach information technology to finish mispronouncing names.

The updates are detailed on Google'due south official web log post and mainly concern how Assistant handles context and natural spoken language. Chief among them are new skills to help it properly pronounce and recognize the names of your contacts, and to remember past conversations when completing a task.

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Google Assistant update: Recognizing unique names

Google Assistant name pronunciation — (Paradigm credit: Google)

Google Banana can get it wrong when enunciating uncommon or tricky names, but the update will let you teach information technology to how to pronounce them the way yous do.

And information technology looks simple to utilize: as the video beneath demonstrates, you'll be able to select the option to "record your own" pronunciation of a name, with Assistant and so using your vocalisation to learn how to say it in hereafter.

Importantly, Google adds it will not proceed a "recording of your phonation," after listening to you articulate a person's name. The feature volition roll out in the side by side few days and though initially merely available in English language, Google says it also plans to add the functionality to other languages.

Google Assistant update: Better timers

Google also says it has rebuilt Banana'south Natural Language Understanding (NLU) to cope with the elasticity of twenty-four hour period-to-solar day conversation and more accurately empathise what you're asking information technology.

One of the fundamental benefits to this improvement is that Assistant will now respond "100 percent more accurately" to timer tasks and alarms you've set.

For instance, if you lot have more than i timer going at the same time, it will practice a amend chore of understanding which one you desire to abolish, or when you desire to change the length that one runs for. It will also realise that you lot might non use the exact same phrase to abolish information technology as you did to create it.

These new context-aware abilities were made possible past upgrades to Google'due south cutting-border BERT engineering science, which was invented past the house in 2018 and which processes words in relation to all the other words in a sentence, rather than ane-past-1 in order.

This update is available now for alarms and timers on Google smart speakers in English in the U.Due south., and will be coming to phones and smart displays soon.

Google Assistant update: More natural conversations

What'south more than, Google Banana volition also be much better at using previous questions to inform your follow-ups, making for a much more natural conversation.

In the example it gives below, an initial question nigh the weather in Miami is followed up with a question about beaches and and so another about buildings.

Google Assistant context updates — (Image credit: Google)

Each time, Google Assistant understands that the follow-ups come up in the context of the beginning, and responds appropriately. Google also explains that information technology volition take into account what y'all're looking at on your telephone or tablet's screen when you enquire the question.

Other contempo Google Assistant updates include the ability to perform tasks without a wake phrase and to help locate your phone; we've rounded up all of favorite Assistant skills in this list of the best Google Banana commands.

More than: The best Google Banana commands in 2021