The artificial intelligence-powered Google Assistant is becoming a showcase product for Google. Ever since the voice assistant was launched, the company has been working on improving and adding new features. Google made a huge round of announcements made at the recent CES 2019. In addition to several new features and integrations for Google Assistant, CES saw multiple companies collaborating with Google to power their own products.
Google did not announce any new first-party hardware devices for Google Assistant during the event. However, the company has said that they are expecting to power 1 billion devices with the voice assistant soon.
Here are all the top announcements made at the CES 2019 regarding Google Assistant.
Integration with Maps
After a long wait, Google Assistant is finally going to be integrated with Google Maps. Users will be able to use Google Assistant to relay information to Maps. Voice-enabled navigation assistance is going to be a huge relief to many, especially for users who are driving. Now users can say, for instance, “Hey Google, take me to home,” and Google Assistant will open Google Maps with the destination set to assigned home address.
Users can also share the estimated arrival times, live location coordinates, and other travel-related information with friends or family using the messaging feature. Google announced that this messaging feature currently works with default SMS, WhatsApp, Messenger, Hangouts, Viber, Telegram, and others.
Travel made easy: Flight check-in and hotel bookings
Google Assistant can be used to check-in to flights by using simple voice commands such as “Hey Google, check-in to my flight.” Google Assistant can now also help users retrieve their boarding pass information and give notifications and reminders about when the check-in facility becomes available.
Users in the U.S. can also book hotel rooms as the company has partnered with multiple hotel chains to accommodate this feature. Expedia, Choice Hotels, Mirai, and TravelClick are some of the partner hotel and travel management companies teaming with Google Assistant. Users can use Google Pay to complete the booking — yet another easy-to-use feature.
Google Assistant: Personal interpreter
Google Assistant is now not just confined to mobile devices. The company is all set to launch it to Google Home devices and smart displays. Devices can support language interpretation with support for a dozen languages.
Google Home devices can now serve as a real-time language interpreter and can help users in spoken or written translations. The company has also promised that this feature will soon be rolling out on mobile devices and will support 27 languages. This will also support text translations on smart displays powered by Google Assistant.
Apart from these announcements about the latest and upcoming features in Google Assistant, there were several other announcements made at CES 2019, regarding other companies supporting Google Assistant. Here are some of them.
Samsung Smart TVs to support Google Assistant
Samsung at CES 2019 announced Google Assistant devices such as Google Home Speakers will be able to control selected smart TVs. Users will now be able to control their smart TVs with simple voice commands. Operations such as turning on/off, changing channels, adjusting th volume levels, and more can be easily performed using voice commands.
Samsung has confirmed that its smart TVs from 2019 will support this feature and most of its existing smart televisions might also receive this feature.
Philips Hue to get even smarter
Philips said its Philips Hue smart bulb will support Google Assistant beginning in March. Google Assistant-based features for the Philips lighting division will be called Gentle Wake Up and will support various features. Users can use voice commands to adjust room lighting and hues to suit their tastes.
Several other companies including Lenovo, Anker, Verizon HumX, House of Marley, and Dish, showcased their products in collaboration with Google Assistant.
Google also hinted that it will soon be possible to use voice commands to perform certain operations such as setting up alarms and viewing search results without leaving a device’s lock screen. The voice-based interaction and the powerful integration of Google Assistant make it one of the best available artificial intelligence-powered digital assistants and we can expect further innovations soon.
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