CES 2019: Google bets on assistant
In the past few days, there has been a flurry of tech news as expected. Yet, tech giant Google remained on the sidelines. That is until now.
Google, in rapid fire, announced a host of news regarding its Assistant that becomes smarter with these new upgrades. The biggest, without a doubt, has to be the introduction of realtime translation for its Assistant via the ‘Interpreter Mode’.
While the Assistant has long been able to do quick translation of few words, it wasn’t of much help during a conversation.
To solve that Google had slowly been building the Interpreter Mode. It claims that the mode will help travellers overcome the barrier of language while travelling abroad.
The Interpreter mode, which will first be rolled out to Google Home speakers and smart displays like the Google Home Hub, will play the role of an interpreter for two and will be able to translate as many as 27 languages.
Among other upgrades that were announced, Google said that its Assistant would now be able to check into flight as well as book hotels.
Google also said that the assistant will be integrated to Google Maps for both iOS and Android.
However, the Android variant is expected to be the more powerful version due to Google’s flexibility with the operating system.
Finally, Google, which expects the voice-powered AI to be on one billion devices around the world by January end, introduced Assistant Connect to help third-party device makers easily integrate the AI into their products.
With so many updates, Google’s voice-powered artificial intelligence was the focus of its attention for this year’s CES with almost every single news item was related to it.
To provide further context, it would be wise to say that Google built a two-storeyed building right outside the convention center, dedicated for demonstrating the Assistant.
With CES 2019, Google has made it pretty clear that the company sees the Assistant as the next evolution of Google searches.
With rivals also aiming for the voice-powered AI to play a big role, Google expects that the Assistant will be the winner in this AI race as the company has made a big bet on it.
