Google Assistant is generally pretty good when it comes to correctly indentifying your voice so it can serve up personalized responses to your queries, and now it’s poised to become even more accurate at voice recognition.
Google says it’s tweaking the training procedure for its Voice Match feature, which allows Google Assistant to recognize the voices of up to six people on a single Assistant-powered speaker, display, or device, such as the Google Nest Mini and the Google Nest Hub Max.
Previously, teaching Google Assistant to recognize your voice involved little more than saying “Hey Google” a few times, but the new process gives Assistant a few more phrases to chew on.
Ben Patterson/IDG
The Voice Match training process for Google Assistant now involves repeating a series of phrases rather than just the “Hey Google” wake word.
Now when you train Google Assistant using Voice Match, you’re asked to repeat a series of phrases, including “OK Google, play my workout playlist,” “OK Google, where is the nearest post office,” “Hey Google, remind me to buy flowers,” and “Hey Google, what time is the sunrise.” While the new training process is somewhat more involved than it was previously, it still takes less than a minute to complete.
Using more and longer phrases during Voice Match training should allow Google Assistant to “better identify who is engaging with significantly higher accuracy,” according to Google.
Separately, Google also announced that you’ll soon be able to adjust the sensitivity of a given Google Assistant-powered device when it comes to hearing the “Hey Google” and “OK Google” wake words.
Lowering the upcoming “Hey Google” sensitivity setting could come in handy if, for example, you find that Google Assistant is frequently waking up accidentally because it thought it heard its wake words. On the flip side, boosting the “Hey Google” sensitivity could help in louder environments where Assistant keeps missing the wake words.
You’ll be able to set the “Hey Google” sensitivity independently for your various Google Home and Nest speakers and displays.
Look for the setting to arrive on the Google Home app in the “coming weeks,” Google says.