Naturally conversational

Language is incredibly complex—people ask about something as simple as the weather in over 10,000 ways (our favorite: “Will it be cats and dogs today?”). We’ve dramatically improved our language understanding so you can speak naturally to your Google Assistant and it will know what you mean.

New voices

One of the most important parts of the Assistant is its voice—it needs to feel both personal and natural. Up until now, creating a new voice took hundreds of hours in a recording studio. But with advancements in AI and WaveNet technology from DeepMind, we can now create new voices in just a few weeks and are able to capture subtleties like pitch, pace, and all the pauses that convey meaning, so that voices are natural-sounding and unique. Starting today, you can choose from six new voices for your Google Assistant. And John Legend will lend his melodic tones to the Assistant later this year—who wouldn’t want him wishing you A Good Night

Continued Conversation

Soon you’ll be able to have a natural back-and-forth conversation without repeating “Hey Google” for each follow-up request. The Assistant will be able to understand when you’re talking to it versus someone else, and will respond accordingly. This feature has been one of our top requests and you’ll be able to turn on Continued Conversation in the coming weeks.

Multiple Actions

A key part of having a natural conversation is being able to ask about many things at once. With Multiple Actions, which is already starting to roll out, the Google Assistant will be able to understand more complex queries like “What’s the weather like in New York and in Austin?”

Pretty Please

Assistant features for families—powered by Family Link—provides free family-friendly games, activities, and stories from content partners like Disney. (Families have listened to over 130,000 hours of children’s stories in the last two months alone.) To help you give your little ones some positive reinforcement when they ask nicely, later this year we’ll introduce Pretty Please, so that the Assistant can understand and encourage polite conversation.

Custom and scheduled Routines

Earlier this year we launched six ready-made Routines to help you get multiple things done with a single command. Starting today, we’re rolling out Custom Routines, which allow you to create your own Routine with any of the Google Assistant’s one million Actions, and start your routine with a phrase that feels best for you. For example, you can create a Custom Routine for family dinner, and kick it off by saying "Hey Google, dinner's ready" and the Assistant can turn on your favorite music, turn off the TV, and broadcast “dinner time!” to everyone in the house. Later this summer, you’ll be able to schedule Routines for a specific day or time either using the Assistant app or through the Google Clock app for Android.