Tech giant Google on March 4, rolled out a new feature with its Google Assistant that will help read articles, books, and information to its users.

According to the company’s official blog, with Google Assistant, web articles can be read out loud. It mentioned: “Whenever a web article is displayed on your browser in your Android phone, you can say, ‘Hey Google, read it’ or ‘Hey Google, read this page’ it will immediately read aloud the content of the web page.”

Google Assistant will highlight words as they are read aloud and also scroll pages by itself. Users can also alter the reading speed and choose from multiple voices.

Google noted that reading text-heavy websites can be chaotic. Hence with the new functionality, people with visual or reading difficulties, or who simply need a little “help getting through meatier articles” can use this feature and ask Google to read it to them.

Google claimed that the new feature will read articles in the same intonation and rhythm as the user would have read. Google said that its artificial intelligence uses “expressive and natural voices” for reading articles.

The notable feature of this development is that it can read an article in 42 languages. So, if the original content is not in the user’s native language, they can use the translation menu to select the desired language. All the pages will then be read out in that language.

Google also mentioned that websites do not need to do anything to incorporate the new feature. They can use the “nopagereadaloud tag.” It further added: “If you’re a developer, you can add the ability for Google Assistant to read aloud content in your mobile app using Actions on Google.

Google hopes that with this new experience, it can remove language barriers and help a wide variety of people access information from the web more easily.

Google introduced this feature at the Consumer Electronics Showin January this year along with other features including scheduled actions, sticky notes, and speed dials.

Published on March 5, 2020