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Changes we're making to Google Assistant

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Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#41

Post by nickcw »

I read the title of this and thought - yes - at last - Google are going to be integrating LLM capabilities with Google Assistant to make it really really useful instead of occasionally useful with a side helping of frustration at how little it understands.

Instead this seems to be a list of useful features that are being taken away!

I'm disappointed. Google employ some of the best AI/ML engineers in the world and they are making assistant worse rather than making it a showcase for what LLMs can do.

Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#42

Post by afavour »

paradox460 wrote: post #38
afavour wrote: post #30

To me this highlights the core failure with all these voice-driven UIs: you have absolutely no idea what is possible and what isn't. Discoverability is zero, which makes big changes like this even more disruptive. I've already decided that I'm done with Google's smart assistant stuff in any case. I have a Google Home with a screen in my kitchen and the most-used feature (aside from just existing as a photo frame) was…

The removal of the AnyList integration drove us to get an Alexa assistant device in the kitchen. It still works there Never thought amazon would have the better assistant ecosystem. Google already has my email and calendar and other stuff, Amazon I have to auth into them like a third party. But it's become true

I've been meaning to get around to trying an Apple HomePod Mini, the AnyList integration on my iPhone works okay (thought as an infuriating two-step process, "Hey Siri, add to shopping list" ... "milk") so hopefully it would be replicable on the pod, too. Seems like the least worst option.

Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#43

Post by paradox460 »

afavour wrote: post #42
paradox460 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The removal of the AnyList integration drove us to get an Alexa assistant device in the kitchen. It still works there Never thought amazon would have the better assistant ecosystem. Google already has my email and calendar and other stuff, Amazon I have to auth into them like a third party. But it's become true

I've been meaning to get around to trying an Apple HomePod Mini, the AnyList integration on my iPhone works okay (thought as an infuriating two-step process, "Hey Siri, add to shopping list" ... "milk") so hopefully it would be replicable on the pod, too. Seems like the least worst option.

I've been playing with homeassistant voice integration and it's pretty darn good

There are some gpt and llama experiments you can run there, but it's finally getting to the point where a local assistant you host yourself might be viable soon

Getting audio into it and having a little speaker so it can talk back is both the easiest and the hardest part. I need to play around more with some esp32s and microphone modules

Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#44

Post by genman »

afavour wrote: post #30

To me this highlights the core failure with all these voice-driven UIs: you have absolutely no idea what is possible and what isn't. Discoverability is zero, which makes big changes like this even more disruptive. I've already decided that I'm done with Google's smart assistant stuff in any case. I have a Google Home with a screen in my kitchen and the most-used feature (aside from just existing as a photo frame) was…

This looks like an anti competitive action that should be investigated.

Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#48

Post by ryandvm »

Glad they're making changes because it couldn't possibly be worse.

It is one of the few products I use daily that gets noticeably worse over time. Shopping lists, calendars, reminders, timers, etc use to work pretty well, but now they're absolute trash. There's a running joke in our house that one of us will ask the Google Home speaker something, it responds with either "I don't know", "I can't do that", or some bizarre non-sequitur and then we say, "just ask ChatGPT".

Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#49

Post by kleiba »

I went into AI almost 30 years ago because I wanted to be part of building a science-fiction future where you could talk to your device just like in the movies. Now that we're almost there, I wouldn't touch a cloud-based speech interface with a ten foot pole -- had I foreseen that my sci-fi future included giving all my private information (like, say, what my voice sounds like) to a face-less billion dollar global corporation, I would have saved my time.

Re: Changes we're making to Google Assistant

#50

Post by omoikane »

bboygravity wrote: post #17

I know what would be a killer feature: the ability to turn it completely off and delete it and never have to see it ever again.

> turn it completely off

Instructions from first search result for "disable google assistant" might work? I found the option buried about 5 menus deep[1], but I left it on since it never triggers for me anyways, probably because I didn't set it up.

[1] Settings -> Google -> Google applications -> Search and assistant -> Google Assistant -> General -> Disable

My phone UI language is not English, the list above are my translations, actual text will likely be different.

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