Google Home isn’t smart enough yet to come up with its own responses to questions, which means that pretty much everything that the device says to you was written by a human. A piece this morning from The Wall Street Journal mentioned how Google and other companies working on intelligent voice assistants — like Amazon — are trying their best to make them as relatable and human-friendly as possible, and one tidbit reveals that Google has even gone as far as to hire writers from Pixar and The Onion to make that a reality…

Per the story:

To infuse personality into Assistant, Google employs writers who have worked on movies at Pixar and crafted jokes for the Onion, says Gummi Hafsteinsson, product-management director of Google Home.

If they’re hiring writers from Pixar or The Onion, I’m still a bit confused why they haven’t given Assistant a proper human name like Siri or Alexa. I guess Google wants you to talk to all of its products as if they’re the replacement for the search box of old, so perhaps that’s part of what is keeping Google attached to the “OK, Google” hotword and the new “Assistant” name. It’s just odd that, at the same time, Google wants Assistant to be personable.

We were on the ground at Google’s October 4th event earlier this month, and got a chance to try out Google Home for ourselves for the first time. It’s a nifty little device and definitely worth the price, but ultimately, it’s just an extension of the Google helper you’ve come to know and love in the form of a standalone always-listening device with an attached speaker. Personally, that’s something I’ve wanted for a long time.

What do you think?

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