Starting today, Google Assistant can speak two languages at once. Initially, the new Google Assistant feature will be able to speak a combination of English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish. Multilingual support will expand to include more languages in the coming months.
Google Assistant is the first digital assistant from competitors Siri, Bixby, Alexa, and Cortana to be able to “speak” two languages at once.
Google Assistant’s multilingual support is available starting today on many Assistant-enabled devices, including Android smartphones, Home speakers, and Android tablets. The only exception to this rule are smart speakers with displays that include Google Assistant, such as the Lenovo Smart Display that launched last month and the JBL Link View that is expected to launch in the coming weeks.
To add support for two languages, simply open the Google Assistant app’s Settings and select Assistant Languages in the properties. Once enabled, you’ll be able to freely switch between the two options.
Google was able to make automatic multilingual speech recognition work in Google Assistant by using the LangID model to identify languages. Then another algorithm is used to achieve speech-to-text in milliseconds. Google will later try to enable its Assistant to speak three languages simultaneously, according to a post on the Google AI blog explaining the process.
Google is preparing to add more than 30 languages to Google Assistant by the end of 2018. Expanding the service to new markets and non-English-speaking regions of the world is a particular challenge for the company, as Google Assistant’s language understanding has been found to be 30% less accurate in accents used outside the United States.
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