The MWC 2019 has seen the launch of innovative products and the showcase of smart technology by various companies.
Google had previously announced the introduction of new phones consisting of the Google Assistant buttons, along with apps that would contain Assistant integration. Google has now stated that Google Assistant would start to provide suggestions in Messages conversations for English users globally, where the information would be presented only after it has been processed on your phone.
The choice remains with the user as to whether they would want to share any particular suggestion or not.
The Messages app uses on-device AI to offer suggestion chips relevant to your conversation, helping you easily find and share information as you chat one-on-one with your best friend, or in a group chat with your entire family – Manuel Bronstein, Vice President of Product, Google Assistant
The user just has too long press the Home button with the Messages app open on their phone to activate the Assistant. There would be a suggestion chip related to maybe a conversation about movies, and by tapping the chip, the Assistant would display a card with recent movie reviews and show times. The user can choose whether or not to include them in his or her conversation.
Google has also introduced the Smart Reply feature in Messages in Spanish, which previously existed for English only.
According to Drew Rowny, Product Lead of Messages,
The Messages app uses on-device AI to offer suggestion chips (similar to Smart Reply) relevant to your conversation, helping you quickly find and share information about three categories to start: movies, restaurants and weather – Drew Rowny, Product Lead of Messages
Moreover, Google stated that the standard messaging experience in Android would be improved so as to make RCS (Rich Communication Services) more widely available. To that extent, Google has been working with ecosystem partners with the likes of Samsung, Vodafone, Huawei, America Movil, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefonica, and Telenor.
Google maintains to have brought in RCS in 24 countries to provide group chats, read receipts, and high-quality media sharing in Messages.
Google’s RCS Business Messaging program claims to provide an interactive messaging experience by collaborating with messaging partners 3CInteractive and LivePerson to provide reminders such as notifications about a prescription refill, or checking bank balance or even checking their recent transactions.
Alongside this, Google has also launched the Assistant in Google Maps to help users get hands-free directions, make calls and even play media. Google plans to introduce this feature to Google Maps in all Assistant-supporting languages.
Google also plans to launch Voice Typing on KaiOS, enabling the Assistant to translate speech to text “in a natural, convenient way.”
According to the recent blog post by Bronstein,
With the cursor in the right field, you can press and hold the Assistant button on your phone and use your voice to dictate your text messages, web searches or anything else that has a text field. If you’re someone who likes to navigate your feature phones’ menus and settings in English, but prefer to talk, text and search in your native language, now you can keep your KaiOS phone’s language in English and use a different language for your Google Assistant
Furthermore, Assistant will now be available in more Indic languages, including Marathi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam and Urdu. The user has to just say, “Ok Google, talk to me in Bengali” to change the Assistant’s language more conveniently.
More languages have been added to the bilingual Assistant that previously comprised of only English, Spanish, German, French, Japanese and Italian. This feature would include Korean, Hindi, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, and Dutch along with the ones stated.
Moreover, to make available access to locally relevant experiences, Google will be partnering with local developers and brands who would be allowed to release their Actions on Android 9 Pie (Go Edition) and KaiOS devices. Google has talked about enabling displaying of Actions such as Galinha Pintadinha’s family-friendly Action in Brazil and enabling cricket fans in India to stay better informed of the latest cricket matches.
