At their IO developer conference Google introduced a new product called Google assistant. I think the best way to explain what this does is to use the example that Sundar Pichai used in the demo that was shown at Google IO. When you ask “What’s playing tonight?” you will get a list on your phone of the movies that are being shown at your nearest cinema. You can then say something like “book me 3 tickets for deadpool”. Google will then take a payment and then you will have the tickets. If you wanted something more child friendly you could say “show me movies for kids” and then say “is the Jungle Book any good?” and it would show reviews for that movie or even a trailer. You can watch the demonstration in the video below which starts at around 24 minutes and 51 seconds in.
Overall it’s very similar to what Siri does on the iPhone and iPad. I think that it’s interesting to see how far Google’s voice recognition technology has come in that it’s able to understand the current context that were in. I also think that it’s amazing that we can use Google assistant to help us save time when it comes to completing a simple task like booking a movie.
At this time we don’t have any information on release date and if it will support all Android devices (smartphones and tablets).
What was the last thing you used Siri or Google voice search/Google Now for? Let me know in the comments.