Google Assistant

Google Assistant has not seen too many updates as of late (as the team focuses on Bard and generative AI), but it is now adding two new US English voices.

As previewed last September, Google Tasks is replacing Reminders and getting Assistant integration. Google is now more widely rolling out the ability to switch over and complete the migration.

Last June, Google announced it was removing third-party Assistant voice apps and Nest Hub games in a year’s time. With that set to occur on June 20, another casualty of that deprecation is the shutdown of third-party Google Assistant Notes & Lists integration.

The Pixel Watch and Wear OS could stand to be a bit more contextual, and Google may be addressing that with an Assistant-powered “At a Glance” complication.

You’ve long been able to ask Google Assistant to play radio stations on all devices, but this integration is currently down amidst an outage. The company has not removed this capability.

In 2016, Google Assistant was announced as “your own personal Google,” and Sundar Pichai believes it has the AI “technology to actually do those things now.” The Google CEO was interviewed by the New York Times on Bard and the broader state of AI.

With the upcoming release of the Pixel Tablet, Google is once again reshaping the Google Assistant smart display ecosystem, which started on Android and has now come full circle back to Android.

The Google Nest Hub is a useful device and, with its second generation, it’s also a great option for playing music. But lately, Google seems to have tweaked the Nest Hub and several other smart speakers to be considerably louder when playing at lower volume settings.

The conversational aspects of generative AI and large language models (LLMs), like LaMDA, make it ripe for smart assistants. Google specifically mentioned Assistant two years ago as a product where it hopes to incorporate “better conversational features.” That has yet to happen, but the Google Assistant team is helping lead Bard development.

As part of the LaMDA announcement in May of 2021, Google cited Assistant, Search, and Workspace as products where it hopes to “incorporat[e] better conversational features.” A new report today looks into Google’s reluctance to launch and incorporate LaMDA into products before OpenAI and Microsoft.

The Google Assistant is currently having an issue, across phones and smart speakers, causing it to be unable to control smart home devices, instead simply replying “I don’t understand.”

Update: The issue now appears to have been resolved.

Adding your Xbox to the Google Home app and connecting it to Google Assistant has some advantages. To get those, you’ll need to connect it. Here’s how.

Google Assistant devices such as the Nest Hub and Nest Mini are handy for a lot of things, and many folks use them for music above all else. But if you’re trying to use radio stations from services such as Pandora via a Google Home routine or an Assistant command, you may have noticed that the functionality is partially broken.

Google announced in October that the Assistant light mode is gone on Android phones and tablets, and reiterated today that “Assistant Uses Dark Mode By Default.”

Back in September, Google confirmed our Insight that Google Tasks would replace Assistant Reminders in the “coming months.” We’re still waiting for this to launch five months later, but work is ongoing.

In the coming months and years, Google will add AI-powered capabilities to its core apps that meaningfully change the experience. This initial wave of additions will share some similarities, and it will be interesting to see how the company brands them. Google will have a number of options, but Assistant seems fairly obvious for these AI features.

The Polestar 2 is now able to access voice controls from your Google Assistant-powered devices including the Nest Hub, Nest Audio, and many more.

There are plenty of useful commands to use on Google Assistant devices, with everything from setting timers to launching music. But for many lately, Google Assistant sleep timers for stopping music have been broken on devices such as the Nest Hub.