Google’s answer to Siri and Alexa , the Assistant in Android smartphones, tablets and Google Home speakers, is to expand to more languages by the year’s end and to expand to more than 90 percent of all compatible Android smartphones, quoted Google. it is soon to become polyglot so that users who speak multiple languages will be able to talk to the Assistant in any language they wish to speak in.
This feature will mainly benefit the people who speak their native language at home but speak a different language at work or among friends, the Assistant will comply to their wishes in any language they want.
Some would think that Google Assistant already supported multiple languages, however to switch from one to another was a tedious job, this new feature will make talking to the Assistant much more natural. Multilingual support will first be available in English, French and German when it rolls out later this year, but more languages will be added in time, the company says.
By the year-end, the Assistant which earlier supported 8 languages, will comply to more than 30 languages. Over the next few months, the Assistant will learn to speak Danish, Dutch, Hindi, Indonesian, Norwegian, Swedish and Thai on Android phones and iPhones. It”s expected to reach more than 95 percent android smartphones by 2019.
Google Assistant’s global footprint is also growing, the company says.
Google Assistant will get an edge over rivals like Siri and Alexa. Amazon may have expanded Echo speakers to more markets around the world, but it hasn’t localized the device for those locations – Alexa only speaks English, German and Japanese. Meanwhile, one of Siri’s biggest strengths had been the fact that it could speak over 20 languages. The added language support was one of several updates for Google Assistant announced this morning, including also an Assistant Mobile OEM program, to help mobile manufacturers more deeply integrate with Assistant, and the launch of Routines and location-based reminders, rolling out next week.