A recorded conversation of a call made to a salon to book an appointment stole the show at Google’s annual I/O developer conference. While making the call, the caller asks to book an appointment at a particular time. The operator asks to hold on, and the caller responds with a ‘Mm hmmm’. What follows is a conversation wherein the slot asked for is not available and a new time slot is agreed upon.

If you’re guessing that one of the people in the conversation is a robot, you’re right. And it’s not the operator at the salon, but rather the caller. The new abilities of the Google Assistant will let Assistant make calls on your behalf to book appointments at restaurants, parlours, etc, and all you need to tell him is the date and time range that is convenient for the appointment. The rest is taken care of by the Assistant. Which means, if the operator asks about the name, age, address, etc, it would convey the details just like a human assistant would.

That takes us to the key messaging that Google is driving going forward. It is all about AI. For one, Google has rebranded Google Research as Google AI. To expand the reach of AI beyond mobile phones and PCs, Google has also announced the official version of its embedded smart operating system, Android Things 1.0.

Google Assistant, which has doubled its user-base in India in a short span of time, could be invading our homes sooner than we imagine. Google has added support for 30 languages for Assistant, including several Indian languages such as Hindi and Tamil. But beyond the basic robotic conversations that Assistant has been limited to so far, it will soon be able to book flight tickets for you, order food, book a table at a restaurant and even let you control all aspects of your connected home, in case you’re already on that journey.

The Assistant will also be a lot more useful on your phone, giving you a quick snapshot of your day, with suggestions based on the time of day, location and recent interactions with it.

To provide a summary of tasks and list items, Google is integrating popular notes and lists services from Google Keep, Any.do and Todoist, among others. The new visual design will be available in the Google Assistant app later this year. Assistant will also be integrated with Google Pay, which will allow Google Assistant to order food for you, pay your bills and even book flight tickets for you.

The Assistant will also begin navigation in Google Maps later this year, with a low visual profile so you can keep your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road. You'll be able to send text messages, play music and podcasts, and get information without leaving the navigation screen. For example, say “Hey Google, read me my messages” and you could get a summary of unread texts with the option to respond by voice.

More interestingly, you no more have to keep repeating ‘hey Google’ everytime you need more information from the Assistant. Once prompted, it continues to respond to your commands till it figures you’re not talking to it anymore. Which also means that while talking to the Assistant, if someone prompts you and starts a separate conversation with you, Assistant would recognise that and will not go crazy taking action to everything you say to your human friend.

As of today, Google Assistant is available on more than 500 million devices, it works with over 5,000 connected home devices, it’s available in cars from more than 40 brands, and it’s built right into devices, from the Active Edge in the Pixel 2 to a dedicated Assistant key in the LG G7 ThinQ. Plus, it will be available in more than 30 languages and 80 countries by the end of the year.

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