[HN Gopher] Changes we're making to Google Assistant
___________________________________________________________________
Changes we're making to Google Assistant
Author : kkkkkkk
Score : 124 points
Date : 2024-01-12 13:36 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.google)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.google)
| napoleoncomplex wrote:
| A lot of the changes just don't make any sense? Some of the
| features removed:
|
| - Using your voice to send an email, video or audio message. You
| can still make calls and send text messages - Rescheduling an
| event in Google Calendar with your voice. You can still schedule
| a new event. - Asking to take certain actions by voice, such as
| send a payment, make a reservation, or post to social media. You
| can still ask Assistant to open your installed apps. - Asking to
| meditate with Calm. You can still ask for meditation options with
| media providers such as YouTube.
|
| All of these seem to fall under the umbrella of "features that
| actually make the assistant an assistant"/connecting the
| assistant to other apps, which I imagine is exactly the opposite
| of where the Assistant trend is going, especially with LLMs. Just
| speaking to a device about which action you want to take and not
| needing to think which app you need to open and navigate feels
| like the UX of the future, whatever this is seems like the
| opposite.
| jpcfl wrote:
| My guess is that a lot of these features are hard-coded, and
| they are deprecating them in order to replace them with a more
| generic LLM-based assistant.
| talleyrand wrote:
| I really hope that this is the case.
| aquova wrote:
| And despite how bullish everyone seems to be on LLMs, I
| suspect we'll see those very same LLM features get ripped out
| within 5 years or so.
| tlogan wrote:
| Perhaps, but it seems like a strange approach. I would assume
| they would retain these features and then gradually replace
| each one with an LLM-based approach.
| matt_heimer wrote:
| They are probably statistically some of the lesser used
| features and since there were layoffs in Assistant (
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38947224 ) they are
| probably looking to shrink the codebase being maintained.
|
| Assistant has trained our household into thinking that its
| pretty limited in what it can do so everyone in our home only
| uses it for basic things. Since Google's assistant can't
| accomplish more than most basic tasks people don't use more
| than the basic tasks. No one wants to learn the appropriate
| subset of English to speak the Google assistant dialect. You
| really need the voice assistants to be reliable and basic or
| extremely capable. There is no real middle ground here for most
| users.
|
| Hopefully once LLMs get more integrated with voice assistants
| we will move more towards the extremely capable side of the
| spectrum.
| esafak wrote:
| Just because an LLM can better parse what you're saying it
| does not mean the business logic to act on it exists. The
| feature discoverability and churn problem will still exist.
| ActionHank wrote:
| So they can sell you the AI assistant subscription that will be
| out later this year.
| photon_collider wrote:
| Here's the list of changes:
| https://support.google.com/assistant/answer/13971691
| Metacelsus wrote:
| Whenever there's a vague press release about "changes we're
| making", it's bound to be changes for the worse.
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| They should call it the "Enshittification Log"
| kevstev wrote:
| True. Ten or more like 15 years ago I would have been excited
| about this title from Google. Now I am just like "oh great what
| am I losing now?!"
|
| Its a shame, its been a LONG time since Google surprised and
| delighted me like they did many times during the 00s.
| smileysteve wrote:
| Defaulting to search or YouTube feels like a money / metrics
| grab.
|
| No longer displaying commute time to work, but you can check it
| on maps? So, they're removing the assistant part into a search
| box.
| nostrademons wrote:
| I suspect it's org politics - but yes, in search of money and
| metrics.
|
| Assistant alienated a lot of other departments from 2016-2020
| with their rapid rise and rapid growth in headcount (and
| ability to push integrations through whether they were a good
| idea or not). Then they failed to make significant money, right
| into an economic environment where making money was prioritized
| much more highly than speculative researchey new markets. These
| changes are them trying to make themselves indispensable to
| other PA's metrics, so that when budgets are set, they can
| argue "You can't cut Assistant, look at the drop in searches &
| YouTube views that would result in." Same reason why they were
| hit harder in the layoffs than other more profitable products.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| > Calls made from speakers and Smart Displays will not show up
| with a caller ID unless you're using Duo.
|
| who the hell is using Duo
| nikanj wrote:
| Nobody, that's why they're using this opportunity to force
| people to it
| smileysteve wrote:
| Wait, I thought Duo was now Gmail meet?
|
| Even Google product teams can't keep track of Google product
| changes. This one happened a year ago!?
| hulitu wrote:
| > Changes we're making to Google Assistant
|
| As always: "Bug fixes and performance improvements". /s
| jmholla wrote:
| In this case it's not. It seems to be the removal of a bunch of
| useful features.
| trey-jones wrote:
| _Sometimes_ I use voice for search.
|
| My primary use-case is creating reminders. For this I use (of
| course), the microphone in the search bar. I guess I'll have to
| find the next best way. Maybe it will end up being better.
| twisteriffic wrote:
| Unless things have changed recently, you can't even do that if
| you use a workspace account. No explanation of why, it just
| silently fails.
|
| I'm down to three gestures with assistant:
|
| - play white noise. 50% success rate. Half the time it plays
| white stripes or some random death metal, which is great when
| my kids are trying to sleep.
|
| - "ok google, stop". This works reasonably reliably.
|
| - "I wasn't talking to you". For the 3-6 times per day when it
| activates for seemingly no reason and where no activation logs
| are ever created.
|
| If I can find a decent internet-attached photo frame to replace
| it I'm out.
| TrueDuality wrote:
| I was really hoping something had forced Google to allow the full
| disabling of the assistant. I really don't find it useful and
| accidentally trigger it more often than I care to admit.
|
| Make it truly useful or get out of my way.
| bboygravity wrote:
| 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.
| firtoz wrote:
| Anything else that allows me to set alarms and timers without
| having to touch my phone?
| nix0n wrote:
| I've been using a 1980s-style digital watch for this.
|
| It's good enough for cooking, which is the only time I care
| about not touching my phone.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| "Hey Siri, set 10 minute timer". But I suppose you meant for
| Android ?
| firtoz wrote:
| Android indeed, or anything that's not Apple nor Amazon nor
| some other "all your data are belong to us".
|
| I know there are some cool DIY hacker projects out there,
| maybe I should really get my hands dirty tbh? In that case,
| does anyone know any good links to things they tried
| recently? Especially with Whisper.cpp and so on it may not
| be TOO hard on a Raspberry Pi... right?
| draugadrotten wrote:
| Try Home Assistant and an esp32 with a mic array.
| https://www.home-assistant.io/voice_control/
| omoikane wrote:
| > 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.
| eterm wrote:
| Wow that's a big list of surprisingly useful features being
| ripped out.
|
| I'd already noticed my new phone (pixel 8, I fucking hate it) had
| trouble setting a simple timer with a voice command ( last time I
| tried it gave me a shitty youtube video result of a 10 minute
| timer!?!), but this list of removed features goes further,
| removing other basic functionality from voice assistance.
|
| If all a voice assistant can do is google my "command" and read
| me the results, that's a terrible experience. The whole selling
| point (to me) is the ability to do something _magic_ with what I
| 'm asking.
| singularity2001 wrote:
| Google has to cater to its reputation of biggest destructor of
| products
| Bartkusa wrote:
| > Managing a stopwatch on Smart Displays and Speakers. You can
| still set timers and alarms.
|
| How much does this cost to maintain? A stopwatch? They're axing
| a STOPWATCH?!
|
| This is embarrassing.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| Taking a guess, based on experiences with using Google
| Assistant extensively:
|
| What do you do if you have statistics saying that, say, a
| feature is used by a small fraction of users, and 40% of the
| activations of the feature were in fact not what the user
| wants, and instead were misunderstandings of requests for
| something else?
|
| Ambiguity is a massive problem.
| ketralnis wrote:
| Be better and misunderstand less often?
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| Human syntax sometimes has inherent ambiguities.
| ketralnis wrote:
| And yet humans figure it out sometimes
| romanows wrote:
| What do you hate about the Pixel 8? I have one and find it
| pretty good, although I'm a very casual mobile phone user (USA-
| based, on Google Fi). I like that it's at least slightly
| smaller than the Pixel 7.
| eterm wrote:
| It's hard to describe what exactly I don't like. Initially I
| thought it was just a muscle memory thing but I've had it
| long enough now that I've got used to the different UI for
| everyday things and try to use it's shortcuts on my old
| phone.
|
| But overall I don't like it.
|
| I don't like how it handles notifications, it seems to hide
| most of them, and the ones it does show it doesn't show in a
| useful way compared to my old phone. What exactly is
| different I can't say, but it's weird.
|
| It also handles permissions differently. Some apps when I
| disable certain permissons get stuck in a permission loop
| because they can't cope with the idea of only having a
| particular permission denied. I never had this problem with
| my old phone despite it also having granular permissions.
| Seems to be related to a change in how notification
| permissions are handled exactly.
|
| I don't like how I can't quickly change the ringer volume. It
| used to be a separate slider when I hit the volume on my old
| phone. Changing now is a gamble and finding how to get it to
| vibrate mode seems beyond me.
|
| 1Password used to allow biometric unlock on my old phone. I
| can't get that to work on my new phone so have to type the
| master password (extremely long password) on a mobile device,
| which makes it useless to me. I'm not going to type my master
| password on a phone keypad in public, that's asking for it to
| leak.
|
| The fingerprint sensor is okay, but I preferred the below-
| screen sensor on my old phone.
|
| It's fiddly to get back to the home screen. On my old phone
| if I scanned my thumbprint it would go back to home. On the
| pixel it's a finicky swipe-up-from-the-bottom thing which
| sometimes goes home and sometimes goes to an app-switcher.
|
| Setting up the phone required giving google rather more
| permissions than I was comfortable with, but denying them
| locked out key features of the phone so I felt forced to
| accept.
|
| The pixel 8 is also slightly smaller than my old phone,
| though of course I knew that when I bought it. I didn't
| realise how much 0.1inches was going to feel like a major
| loss. I didn't want to go over-sized with the pixel 8 pro
| though.
|
| Overall a downgrade and really horrible experience compared
| to my old phone, which I only replaced because it was so old
| and stopped getting regular updates. It was a Huawei P20 pro
| and in terms of general use still feels just as fast as it
| did when it was new.
|
| The only feature I like that the pixel 8 has which my old
| phone doesn't is the wireless charging. That's a game changer
| when it comes to preventing wires wearing out.
| disillusioned wrote:
| >I don't like how it handles notifications, it seems to
| hide most of them, and the ones it does show it doesn't
| show in a useful way compared to my old phone.
|
| If an app's notification is set to "silent", it'll push it
| below a certain divider line, and some notifications may be
| hidden while in DND mode, and then revealed when out of
| DND, which is a disjointed experience and not the best, but
| _is_ configurable.
|
| >I don't like how I can't quickly change the ringer volume.
| It used to be a separate slider when I hit the volume on my
| old phone. Changing now is a gamble and
|
| Yeah, this used to be easier. Now you have to click the
| ellipsis at the bottom of the volume slider to open up the
| other volumes, but it's clearly labeled.
|
| >finding how to get it to vibrate mode seems beyond me.
|
| This is simple: it's the phone icon at the top of the
| volume interface when you change volume.
|
| >1Password used to allow biometric unlock on my old phone.
|
| This seems to work for me on my P8Pro
|
| >It's fiddly to get back to the home screen. On my old
| phone if I scanned my thumbprint it would go back to home.
| On the pixel it's a finicky swipe-up-from-the-bottom thing
| which sometimes goes home and sometimes goes to an app-
| switcher.
|
| I absolutely hate the gesture navigation but I solved this
| by sticking with the old school 3-button navigation, which
| you can change in settings.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| > last time I tried it gave me a shitty youtube video result of
| a 10 minute timer!?!
|
| A YouTube video has the chance to earn them advertising
| revenue. A 10-minute timer does not.
|
| However, they are clearly missing an opportunity: "Your
| 10-minute timer, sponsored by Burger King, has finished. Would
| you like to order a Whopper to be delivered by Uber Eats?"
| peeters wrote:
| Another step in Android's steady progression of become less and
| less useful hands-free. It's incredible to me that my experience
| with my Nexus One in 2010 was better than it is today with a
| Pixel 7. The fact that it arbitrarily decides to not recognize
| some contacts on some days. The fact that it can't handle me
| spelling out a street name when it insists on replacing the
| street name that I'm saying with something completely different.
| The fact that YouTube Music would always play "some driving
| music" that it chooses over my playlist literally called "Driving
| Music", when I would say "Play my Driving Music Playlist on
| YouTube Music". And now the assistant is getting even less
| personalized, which means it will care even less about what
| you're literally saying, and just send you into a swamp of
| generic assumptions.
|
| Assistants were SO much more usable when they would require
| strict trigger language, and interpret it literally and
| formulaically. Yes you would have to learn its language, but once
| you did, you could actually accomplish what you wanted to
| accomplish, unlike today.
| avtolik wrote:
| Yep. It is a pretty useless device if you cannot hold it in
| your hand and unlock it. So for example, when I ride my bike I
| can pause the music or receive a call and not much else.
| peeters wrote:
| I wonder how many road deaths their declining hands-free
| quality has contributed to? I'd wager the number has more
| than two digits. It's one thing to never have supported
| something hands-free, but when something that you used to be
| able to regularly do hands-free all of a sudden doesn't work,
| drivers are bound to get frustrated and use the device hand-
| held.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Google needs to toss Sundar and get a competent CEO who can
| forcefully smash the org back into line.
|
| Google has turned into these little micro clusters of
| ideologies and functional philosophies, leading to a
| horrifically fragmented mess of google branded products. All
| which come loaded now with end-of-life anxiety as google just
| farts out products that seem to dissipate just as fast.
|
| The fact that most google apps function better on iOS than
| Pixel phones should be enough to get any sane board to take
| action. This is without even mentioning the disaster that
| search has become, or completely dropping the ball on LLMs.
| twisteriffic wrote:
| > Google has turned into these little micro clusters of
| ideologies and functional philosophies, leading to a
| horrifically fragmented mess
|
| Every large software org eventually becomes Microsoft.
| 0xcafefood wrote:
| Google would be lucky to become another Microsoft. As
| things are going now, it's likelier to become another IBM.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Mine decided to helpfully alert me that there were three
| birthdays on January 1st, because it had somehow reset some
| contacts' birthdays to Jan 1, 1970.
|
| Except when I went to check the Contacts to fix them, they had
| no birthday at all.
|
| Death by a thousand cuts.
| pragmaticpro wrote:
| _> Asking to take certain actions by voice, such as send a
| payment, make a reservation, or post to social media. You can
| still ask Assistant to open your installed apps._
|
| This seems to imply that apps which feature 'app actions' would
| no longer work properly and will need to be opened via assistant
| separately...
|
| Sounds like a major regression for those scenarios with needing
| to issue a separate command to open an app.
| jacooper wrote:
| TBH all Classic voixe assistants are terrible, they should be
| replaced with any of the mainstream LLM models we have.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| To me the problem isn't lack of language understanding - it's
| more lack of integration with useful actions, although LLM
| support would certainly help with feature discovery and
| flexible invocation of actions.
|
| Presumably Google Assistant is on it's way to being replaced by
| ChatGPT with plugins, although these would need access to phone
| APIs to do local stuff.
| petee wrote:
| It says you can only add new events now and not reschedule...does
| that mean when Assistant gets the info wrong for the event I'll
| have to go in and manually change it? It screws up constantly, so
| it sounds like a headache
| asdajksah2123 wrote:
| I'm quite torn on this (to be fair, I rarely use voice commands
| at all...I've found it's usually more effort to fix things when
| it gets it wrong than the cumulative sum of all the times it may
| save me any time whatsoever).
|
| 1. I can see how this is absolutely frustrating for someone who
| uses one of these commands regularly.
|
| 2. At the same time, one of the issues with voice commands
| relative to say keyboard input is the lack of delineation. If I
| hit Ctrl + Enter on my keyboard, there's no way for the computer
| to interpret that any differently. However, that's not the case
| with voice commands. It needs to keep determining (a) what I
| said, (b) whether it's a command or just voice, (c) whether it's
| a command it's supposed to execute and that's before it even
| figures out waht to execute. But the problem is that as the
| number of voice commands increases, the number of false "this is
| a command and not just voice" triggers will increase.
|
| There's probably a genuine benefit for Google's users in the
| universe of commands being very small as long as the command
| that's removed is not one they use.
|
| I've noticed several of the options are "you can use a custom
| routine to do this instead". Maybe Google should have included
| the custom routine and made it togglable.
| w0m wrote:
| and this sucks.
| afavour wrote:
| 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 an integration with a really useful shopping
| list app called AnyList. It certainly wasn't _complex_ , we'd say
| "Hey Google, add <x> to the shopping list" and it would do it.
| But it was very useful: I'd have something in my hands I just
| pulled from the fridge (e.g. milk) and be able to add it to the
| list without interrupting what I'm doing. If it had to wait until
| I was done for me to pull out my phone I'd inevitably forget.
|
| Then one day Google decided to disable that integration. Now the
| only shopping list you can add to is one Google provides (which
| naturally has way fewer features than AnyList). They've never
| provided even the remotest defense for why they've removed it,
| it's very obviously to lock us into the Google ecosystem. So our
| Google Home is now a glorified photo frame that plays music from
| time to time (and even then prioritizes cover versions and
| YouTube videos over actual songs, presumably because $$$)
| paradox460 wrote:
| 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
| afavour wrote:
| 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.
| paradox460 wrote:
| 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
| speg wrote:
| I do this on my HomePod mini all the time. Take last apple
| out of fridge? "Siri, add apples to my grocery list."
|
| Boom, done. Synced with my wife too. This is using the
| Apple Reminders though, as it seems to have less friction
| than third party apps...
| pflenker wrote:
| On top of what you mentioned in your first sentence, any ideas
| to improve discoverability are horrible. I hate it when Alexa
| does not play my podcast right away but explains to me how I
| can change episodes. I despise Alexa for telling me that I have
| some notification before starting my timer. And so on - any
| voice only attempt to explain me something without me asking
| for it means adding a lot of friction between me and my goal.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| The issue is that everyone removed hierarchical menus and
| replaced them with... nothing.
|
| There is no command ontology anymore. Consequently,
| discovering commands in-app is UX anathema.
|
| "Use the internet, buddy. One of our customers probably
| documented how-to somewhere on it."
| walterbell wrote:
| _> Alexa for telling me that I have some notification before
| starting my timer_ Device > Settings > Sounds
| > Notification > none
|
| "Do Not Disturb" will suppress notifications without
| affecting alarms and timers.
| happymellon wrote:
| A usual conversation my wife had with Google:
|
| > okay Google set a timer for 15 mins
|
| Certainly, and did you know I can also set an alarm for 6 am
| in the kitchen?
|
| > Fuck off Google
| gleenn wrote:
| I'm not dying for them to record more than absolutely
| necessary, but I really hope all the voice ui engineers do
| log curses to know when their app is doing annoying stuff.
| The number of times these things screw up I definitely get
| really spicy and hope that feedback males it back.
| RexM wrote:
| Yes... when it does anything other than what I ask, it makes
| me feel like it's wasting my time.
|
| Alexa recently started responding with "Good afternoon! <the
| normal response>" and it irks me more than it probably
| should. I've looked to see if I can turn it off and can't
| find the option.
|
| I don't need pleasantries from a machine.
| filedottsx wrote:
| I got slightly irritated by the "Good afternoon!" message
| earlier today. Especially because I had already used Alexa
| a few times before it did that.
| genman wrote:
| This looks like an anti competitive action that should be
| investigated.
| 1234letshaveatw wrote:
| you can tell someone lives in California when the most-used
| assistant feature isn't asking about the weather
| afavour wrote:
| Quite the opposite. I bike the kids to school every morning.
| The weather is _too important_ to be summed up by a voice
| summary, I need the hour by hour details.
| danielbln wrote:
| I can ask Alexa e.g. "what's the weather at 9am", that
| doesn't work with Google Assistant?
| riversflow wrote:
| Not OP, but I want to see an hour by hour forecast for
| the day. If there is precip, I want to see an animated
| active radar view, with forecast frames.
|
| "What's the weather @ time" is inadequate. I live in
| California(albeit not on the coast or in the valley).
| achates wrote:
| "The weather in Nijmegen is..."
| esafak wrote:
| Also fails when you live in a town that has homonyms, so
| it can fail even when it correctly hears the word. Wrong
| country, that's all!
| afavour wrote:
| I dunno, I've never tried. It's just one of those
| scenarios where I find the visual is a much more useful
| medium.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| You can definitely do that.
| ilzmastr wrote:
| Funny but true, its usually a front page story in the
| Chronicle if it is going to rain during the week
| guyzero wrote:
| I live in California and it's still my most-used feature. I
| gotta know if I need to dress for 17C or 19C.
| pkulak wrote:
| I still have a Google Home in the kitchen, but what I really
| want it to display is data from my weather station, transit
| info, the time, etc. I can't control that damn thing at all.
| I've got a TidByt coming today, which I have high hopes for!
| spankalee wrote:
| I haven't used it myself, but Home Assistant can cast to a
| Google Home Hub, so afaiu, you can set up a whole dashboard
| of widgets and controls and use it from a stock Home Hub.
| SparkyMcUnicorn wrote:
| And touch interface works on the casted lovelace dashboards
| too!
|
| Completely opens up these displays to be a virtually
| unrestricted canvas for doing or displaying anything you
| want.
| rohansingh wrote:
| I'm going to have to try that out, my whole apartment is
| mostly Google Home-based.
|
| That said, we are building a Home Assistant integration at
| Tidbyt as well.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Just setup a monitor with some browser windows on it? Or one
| browser window with a local page that embeds the info?
| esafak wrote:
| It's not just voice, but conversational interfaces in general
| that have this discoverability problem. That means chatGPT. I'm
| glad people are discovering it, if you excuse the pun. CUIs are
| not a panacea, not a replacement for conventional UIs.
| gr__or wrote:
| I think there's a line worth drawing here: Pre-LLM voice
| interfaces required you to guess the command(s) the designer
| of the thinking were having in mind for the action you want
| to perform. With LLMs you can be 10ft into human-level
| vaguery and metaphorism and your intent might still survive.
|
| So the difference wrt discovery is that you only have to
| gesture at what you wanna do and, if a matching action
| exists, there is a chance it will be understood.
|
| I'd wager we'll see a renaissance of voice assistants with
| LLMs, especially once the good-enough ones can run on device.
| esafak wrote:
| When you put it that way I am reminded of my youthful
| efforts at solving puzzles in Sierra Online text adventures
| by guessing the right prompt. I guess I got early training
| for successfully interacting with LLMs :)
| RandomWorker wrote:
| Funny fact is that this is core use case I use siri to add
| things to the reminders app which I have a smart list called
| "shopping list." It's amazing how great this is, and how many
| times I use this.
| edu wrote:
| I do exactly the same.
| axolttl88 wrote:
| This and music control are the uniques cases where Siri Just
| Works for me. "Add toothpaste to my shopping list" no fluff
| no nonsense replies, just "I added that to the shopping list"
| - and it's on my phone's Reminders in that list.
|
| I wonder how well they've optimised Siri for a just few
| specific use cases like this, because nothing else seems to
| reliably work on it.
| skinkestek wrote:
| Today for the first time I asked Siri for the weather
| forecast for next week and it actually replied in a
| sensible way.
|
| Until now I have only been saying simple commands like
| "countdown n minutes" or "call my favorite wife" (I only
| have one but thankfully she is also my favorite.)
| maaaaattttt wrote:
| I second this. My two other derived commands I use every day
| are "remind in 2 hours to do X" or "remind me Friday at 7 to
| take Y". This and "timer X minutes".
|
| I would be very sad if these were to disappear or to stop
| working as well as it does now (I like that if I say "remind
| me tomorrow" when it's right past midnight it asks for
| confirmation that I actually mean the same day since it's
| "already tomorrow")
| netsharc wrote:
| My Google Home - Lenovo Smart Clock just says "I'll remind
| you today at $TIME".
|
| The device is out of support, it has its glitches (e.g.
| it's still able to play and pause podcasts, but after
| pausing it would say "Sorry. something's gone wrong", if
| asking it to snooze an alarm it would say "OK, alright" and
| then "snoozing for 10 minutes"), looking forward (not!) to
| Google making a breaking change and it being e-waste soon.
|
| Hah, in the imaginary future where we have cyborg
| assistants instead of climate destruction, my robot butler
| will pour half a cup of tea, go back to the kitchen, and
| then return to pour the second half of the cup, and I'll
| tell my guest, "Yeah, it's a 5 year old model, the startup
| that made him went bust so I'm using a firmware from a
| Ukranian forum... Dzhevs, mozhna meni trokhi tsukru?"
| theptip wrote:
| This problem can be solved pretty soon though; given a good
| enough LLM, and perhaps for power users a configurable set of
| integrations, you should be able to make any language request,
| translate it into verbs, and ask for an explanation if you get
| confusing results. With in-context learning perhaps you can
| even get to the holy grail of "when I ask for X, please always
| apply interpretation Y" for personalization.
|
| I think the broader context here is that Google is downsizing
| the current Assistant team in preparation for an LLM-based
| replacement, perhaps once Gemini has rolled out.
| alganet wrote:
| Makes sense. What is a good LLM though? I think there's a lot
| of questions hidden in that part of the solution.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| I think it's hilarious that you can't reliably ask Assistant
| "what is this song?" any more but they've provided a dedicated
| button for what should be an easy query to process.
| geoelectric wrote:
| Echo still syncs with AnyList fwiw.
|
| I have an Alexa list called "Grocery" that does a 2-way sync,
| and use it to accelerate my online Safeway orders via AnyList.
|
| You can sync to the default Amazon Shopping list too, but I
| find it works better if you have a secondary one specifically
| for sync.
| thrillgore wrote:
| Typical Google
| htrp wrote:
| List of items being removed... instead of being nested under the
| announcement
|
| * Playing and controlling audiobooks on Google Play Books with
| your voice. You can still cast audiobooks from your mobile
| device.
|
| * Setting or using media alarms, music alarms, or radio alarms on
| Google Assistant enabled devices. You can create a custom Routine
| that has similar behavior or use a standard alarm.
|
| * Accessing or managing your cookbook, transfering recipes from
| device to device, playing an instructional recipe video, or
| showing step-by-step recipes. You can use Google Assistant to
| search for recipes across the web and YouTube.
|
| * Managing a stopwatch on Smart Displays and Speakers. You can
| still set timers and alarms.
|
| * Using your voice to call a device or broadcast a message to
| your Google Family Group. You can still broadcast to devices in
| your home.
|
| * Using your voice to send an email, video or audio message. You
| can still make calls and send text messages.
|
| * Rescheduling an event in Google Calendar with your voice. You
| can still schedule a new event.
|
| * Using App Launcher in Google Assistant driving mode on Google
| Maps to read and send messages, make calls, and control media.
| You can still use voice control on Google Maps the same way.
|
| * Asking to schedule or hear previously scheduled Family Bell
| announcements. You can create a custom Routine that has similar
| behavior.
|
| * Asking to meditate with Calm. You can still ask for meditation
| options with media providers such as YouTube.
|
| * Voice control for activities will no longer be available on
| Fitbit Sense and Versa 3 devices. You'll need to use the buttons
| on your device to start, stop, pause, and resume activities. You
| can still voice control activities on Pixel Watches.
|
| * Viewing your sleep summaries will only be available on Google
| Smart Displays. You can still ask for sleep details by voice on
| third-party smart clocks.
|
| * Calls made from speakers and Smart Displays will not show up
| with a caller ID unless you're using Duo.
|
| * Viewing the ambient "Commute to Work" time estimates on Smart
| Displays. You can still ask for commute times and get directions
| by voice.
|
| * Checking personal travel itineraries by voice. You can still
| ask for flight status.
|
| * Asking for information about your contacts. You can still make
| calls to your contacts.
|
| * Asking to take certain actions by voice, such as send a
| payment, make a reservation, or post to social media. You can
| still ask Assistant to open your installed apps.
| nickcw wrote:
| 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.
| crimsoneer wrote:
| Agreed, this is so mystifying. Google Assistant is such an
| obvious use case.
| ygjb wrote:
| The problem is that the current crop of google assistant
| devices (excluding current and upcoming gen cell phones) are
| woefully underpowered for local models, meaning that supporting
| the existing install base will be expensive.
|
| I expect that a new assistant like product (Google Bard Home or
| something) will be announced and existing Assistant/Home
| devices will be deprecated.
| kotaKat wrote:
| Sounds like Google's making a bunch of anti-competitive moves by
| stripping out _loads_ of third party support from Assistant.
|
| Makes you think.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| So perhaps it's a good day to call for contributors to add more
| actions to https://github.com/Stypox/dicio-android ? If Google
| wants to remove features, they can be replaced by something that
| doesn't have that problem.
| ryandvm wrote:
| 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".
| esafak wrote:
| On a good day, when it asks me for feedback I tell it to fire
| the person in charge. On less charitable days I throw in the
| rest of the team.
| password4321 wrote:
| From what I read it sounds like your plan is working!
| kleiba wrote:
| 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.
| Terr_ wrote:
| I want to see a personal AI revolution to echo the Personal
| Computer revolution.
|
| Tools that people own-- capital, almost--that work for
| individual own best-interests.
| toyg wrote:
| It's never going to happen.
|
| The Personal Computer revolution was made possible by
| economies of scale in industrial manufacturing of relatively
| simple components. Companies made money by selling widgets to
| as many people as possible.
|
| By definition, AI is only made possible by advances in
| massive computation capacity, which is easier to achieve and
| improve with centralized models. This is always going to be
| the realm of Big Money.
|
| In a way, AI epitomizes the shift from XX-century economics,
| based on manufacturing, to a XXI-century version based on
| extracting rent from networked digital subjects.
| leviathant wrote:
| I think because I have Google Fi, I kept getting Google Home
| products. We've got a couple of the little speakers, and a couple
| of the little Nest hubs. I bought a pair of Nest Home Max
| speakers when they were blowing them out, because people said
| they sounded good - they do!
|
| All this is to say I'm fairly late to the voice assistant party.
| At some point my wife and I decided to give it a good try. Read
| up on best practices. Figured it'd been something that had been
| in market a good long time, maybe by now the kinks were worked
| out.
|
| The search results were hit or miss. It was not clear where tasks
| were being saved to.
|
| So for the last few years, here are the voice commands we've
| used:
|
| ok google, what's the weather today
|
| ok google, play white noise
|
| ok google, stop
|
| ...and every now and then, we ask it to search for info on a
| topic and it fails comically. I'm not surprised to see a big
| shift here.
|
| Oooh. On my Pixel, I do use "OK Google, Turn off the flashlight"
| - that IS helpful.
| twisteriffic wrote:
| What's your success rate on white noise? I'm down in the 50s
| with no earthly idea of why. I get white stripes and random
| death metal with great regularity.
| nemothekid wrote:
| You'd think with all the noise about how awful Siri is you would
| see Google crushing voice integrations as a top 3 advantage. Now
| I'm left wondering if the reason Apple has abandoned Siri and
| Homepod is because they are fundamentally flawed products.
| wavemode wrote:
| Assistant has lived just a little too long. Google's hands are
| starting to enclose around its neck.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Google Concierge is waiting for it's day in the sun.
| ChilledTonic wrote:
| I was watching a friend use Siri the other day (I've never used
| an iPhone) and I was blown away by how much it could accomplish
| in comparison to Google Assistant. He said he used Siri as the
| default way of interfacing with his phone, which I found
| interesting.
|
| Reading this list of removals, especially the removal of CALLER
| ID, on video calls no less, an insane choice - how much could
| that possibily cost to maintain? - I'm honestly wondering if
| they're actively trying to drive people into Apple's ecosystem.
|
| Nevertheless I'll never buy a Google product as long as I live.
| How can I trust them not to completely mothball every useful
| feature I bought it for?
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| that's strange. I remember watching mkbhd assistant comparison
| and I thought google had the more capable one
| reportingsjr wrote:
| Yeah, it's no competition. Siri is terrible in comparison to
| google assistant. Not sure what OP is on about.
| pound wrote:
| Of all 3, I'd say Alexa is the most practical for using at
| home, google one is kinda the smartest one but also is the
| most frustrating one - what worked yesterday will not work
| today or will work occasionally (exact same prompt's
| wording). Siri will not always respond but overall works
| fine within its somewhat limited scope, as compared to
| others (like number of integrations supported), but then
| again - ecosystem..
|
| My biggest issue with Siri is intercom: at home we mostly
| speak other language than english, and when using intercom
| Siri often tries to parse what's being recorded, instead of
| just recording audio sample and send it verbatim.
|
| Something like:
|
| Me - Hey Siri, Intercom
|
| Siri - intercom chime (not 'Aha?' of responding to just Hey
| Siri)
|
| Me - *bjlkabdgkjhqwruo;fghnasd.mkfnlkjashfjkasdngjkasbdg*
| (doesn't matter, different language)
|
| Siri (thinking she recognized some word) - Here are the
| results for what you asked..
| pprotas wrote:
| If Siri is better than Google Assistant these days... that says
| more about how bad GA is, not how good Siri is. I say this as
| an owner of two HomePod Minis
| BonoboIO wrote:
| I found this on the web for you
| SparkyMcUnicorn wrote:
| Siri is good enough to get by, but is definitely not better
| than Google in my opinion (and several friends that have both
| Google Nest and Apple HomePod devices).
|
| Siri is sorry she can't help, misunderstands things, or
| straight up ignores requests way too often.
|
| I will say that the non-display Google devices are often more
| helpful than the ones with displays. The displays want to
| show you stuff, but the non-displays will tend to give you an
| answer.
|
| e.g. "what time does walmart close" will respond with "there
| are several stores in your area" and then show you a list of
| stores with their hours, but the non-display devices will
| just reference the closest store and tell you when it closes.
| duffyjp wrote:
| Siri must not like me, she never does what I want.
|
| "Hey Siri, turn off my alarm" (ignores me)
|
| "Hey Siri, turn off my alarm" (ignores me)
|
| "Hey Siri, I'm going to buy an Android" (turns off alarm,
| refuses to elaborate)
| fragmede wrote:
| My favorite problem is "Hey Siri, navigate home" proceeds to
| open navigation and send me to a place that isn't my home. I
| can up open maps manually and click on "home" and it works
| totally fine, but for some reason, Siri finds a place called
| "home" that isn't actually my home to send me to.
| pottertheotter wrote:
| Can you give some examples of how your friend used Siri? I feel
| like I don't use it enough.
| seatac76 wrote:
| Siri is objectively worse in almost every way imaginable. I
| find that hard to believe. I have both an iPhone and a work
| Pixel Pro, the difference between them is night and day. Siri
| can't get basic spelling right, let alone accomplish complex
| tasks. To date it does not hold context at all, GA is far
| better in that regard.
|
| MKBHD Comparison:https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2MGqmuEdtU
|
| Somewhat old but still holds true imho.
| tlogan wrote:
| I believe Google is heading in the wrong direction with their
| current approach. In my opinion, integrating LLMs and add
| function calling would be a significant improvement. This
| integration would enable the assistant to perform more complex
| and integrated tasks, and facilitate more meaningful
| conversations. Especially in scenarios where the user's request
| isn't clear or it's uncertain which application to invoke and
| how, this advanced interaction capability could be incredibly
| beneficial.
| notatoad wrote:
| > In my opinion, integrating LLMs and add function calling
| would be a significant improvement
|
| i'm sure this is where they're headed. but what announcement
| reads as to me is some clever PM at google realized they don't
| want to announce a new LLM update to the assistant and have to
| include all the functionality it loses in that same
| announcment. so they're taking the functionality away now, and
| in six months they can announce a new assistant that has
| feature parity with the "old one"
| binkHN wrote:
| The enshittification of everything. These are not just "changes,"
| this is them removing functionality and replacing it with
| nothing.
| bilalq wrote:
| For all the hype "AI" gets these days, it's amazing how much
| things have regressed. My Android phone used to remember where I
| parked and show it on my Google Now feed and a push notification
| as I headed out, all without ever asking it to do anything. The
| travel.google.com site used to show my itineraries without ever
| adding them there. Hotels, flights, car rentals, and more would
| be aggregated. Doesn't do that anymore. You used to just be able
| to search for "my flights" on Google and it'd tell you about you
| about your upcoming flights.
| leros wrote:
| The old Google Now feed was amazing. Showed me where my car is
| parked. Told me when to leave to arrive places in time. Pulled
| up my flight details automatically. Now it's just a bunch of
| click bait articles.
| verelo wrote:
| It's almost like google intentionally kills good projects. I
| still miss Inbox more than anything. The snooze feature on an
| email was so amazing.
| fragmede wrote:
| I miss Inbox too, but Gmail now has snooze functionality
| built in.
| throw_nbvc1234 wrote:
| I had to stop using gmail/snooze on my ipad because the
| snoozes wouldn't be synced with my phone. Seems like such
| a poor implementation vs inbox.
| tayloramurphy wrote:
| I've been using (and paying!) https://simpl.fyi/ for a few
| years now and it makes up for missing inbox for me. It was
| founded by the design lead for Inbox. Highly recommend if
| you use a Chromium-based browser.
| rezonant wrote:
| It was fantastic. It's worth noting that Pixel's At a Glance
| does still tell you when to leave (and you get a
| notification), but as far as I can tell, the parking features
| are completely gone.
|
| That being said, I no longer have any clue what features
| exist in Google's ecosystem because their A/B and feature
| flag rollout system is _so fundamentally broken and misused
| by the product teams_ that some features literally never
| arrive for some users until they factory reset their devices,
| and suddenly they get a fresh set of feature flags. I am
| still waiting on just about all of the new RCS features
| Google announced months ago, and just yesterday I spent a
| bunch of time trying to figure out why my partner 's devices
| never received cross device timers while all of my devices
| do. That feature was launched in May of last year. My partner
| does a lot of the cooking, and our kitchen Nest Hub usually
| handles the timers. But only my phone and tablet receive it's
| timer status...
|
| I say misused above, because it strongly appears that they
| announce features before completion and then use an extremely
| shallow rollout to _finish_ the features with the cover of
| "finding bugs". Is it actually released if the only Google
| accounts that receive the flags are the dev and product team
| members?
|
| Google, you've perverted a fantastic engineering practice
| into a broken mess that reduces your user's confidence in
| your product and breeds confusion that hurts your brand.
| kccqzy wrote:
| I have a very similar experience. When I bought an EV I
| wanted to turn on Google Maps' energy efficient routing
| feature (announced in 2021 at
| https://blog.google/products/maps/3-new-ways-navigate-
| more-s...) but the setting is simply not present. After an
| hour of wasted time debugging, I had to uninstall and
| reinstall the app to get the setting to show up.
|
| I personally much prefer Apple's approach where generally
| features are identified by specific version numbers. If you
| have the version or newer, you have it. Certainly a bit
| more difficult to do capacity planning for the backend
| engineers but absolutely worthwhile for users.
| gretch wrote:
| In the past, Google has been criticized for being
| anticompetitive by integrating too much with itself.
|
| Here is an article with complaints about Google travel.
| https://skift.com/2020/10/20/u-s-antitrust-lawsuit-faults-go...
| fsmv wrote:
| The new DMA law prevents combining data across products
| progbits wrote:
| Also, some companies stopped including the essential data in
| the email itself, eg. eshops won't list the products or
| tracking numbers directly in the order confirmation email,
| but only link to their website where gmail can't extract it.
| I think I've seen some airlines do the same, though most do
| include a boarding pass attachment.
| 0xcafefood wrote:
| Does it prevent it? I thought it just required explicit
| consent from users.
| gerash wrote:
| Really? If so, then Google should only apply it to European
| users and not the entire world
| resolutebat wrote:
| I've had a Google Home for close to ten years and I don't think
| I've ever used a single one of these features.
|
| Then again, 99% of my Assistant use is kitchen timers and
| Spotify, and I systematically disable it on my phones. My kids
| are still salty about Song Quiz going away last year though.
| iteratethis wrote:
| "We're doing cost cuts and layoffs and here's why this is great
| for you".
| summerlight wrote:
| https://www.semafor.com/article/01/10/2024/google-lays-off-h...
|
| Note that there has been a significant layoff days ago in the
| assistant team to "improve Google Assistant as it explores
| integrating newer artificial intelligence technology into its
| products". Probably they're trying to replace the backend for the
| assistant with some LMM-based models and see those
| functionalities are the blockers? Of course, this could be (and
| should be IMO) done in more gradual migrations rather than this
| sudden deprecation, but who knows what those execs have in their
| mind.
| 0xcafefood wrote:
| > who knows what those execs have in their mind.
|
| If I understand Google culture correctly, "promo" is the
| answer.
| _dain_ wrote:
| Reading this thread is kinda bizarre to me. Do people actually
| ... _talk_ to their phones? Like for real, not just in
| cringeworthy scripted adverts? I 've never used any of these
| voice assistant things and nor does anyone I know. It always
| seemed like a huge gimmick to me. Am I just in a bubble?
| post_break wrote:
| You are in a bubble. And these changes also apply to Google
| Home devices which are in millions of homes.
| croisillon wrote:
| s.o. and i both own iphones but never talk to siri. recently we
| spent a week at an airbnb with an alexa thing so we used it for
| music and couple more stuff, it was sometimes good, other times
| so bad it was funny
|
| anyway, we came back home and still don't use siri
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| Amazing that this post about how they are intent on delivering
| the "best possible user experience" just announces a ton of
| features they're dropping and literally not one feature they are
| adding.
|
| Not that it matters to me because having bought an Amazon Echo a
| few years back I find these things mostly useless. It basically
| just does the most basic things a phone does (music, weather,
| news headlines), but with added friction when it misinterprets
| you. They are a clear example of something we rush to buy because
| they are "the future" before realising that the future is just
| the present but more tedious and with more ads.
| nineteen999 wrote:
| How about you remove the popup prompt to turn on Google Assistant
| EVERY TIME I connect my Bluetooth earphones? It's turned off for
| a reason.
| shooker435 wrote:
| This is what makes me skeptical of ever buying a Volvo or other
| car with Google Assistant built in.
| aristus wrote:
| Something that's kinda funny but baffling to me is the unspoken
| assumption that a UI with voice input should also default to
| voice output.
|
| That's not how two humans work on command / response tasks, say,
| hanging pictures. You say, "a finger to the left and up" and I
| move the picture. Silent UI feedback is a curiously unplumbed
| idea.
|
| Or another one: if you sit at a restaurant and ask the menu,
| would you rather they tediously recite it? Or hand you a paper
| menu while maybe giving a couple tips like "the fish pasta is
| awesome today"?
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| How do you get feedback then?
|
| Supposedly, when you are voice commanding, you do so because
| you are unable to look at the device and visually confirm that
| the correct action is being undertaken.
| Yhippa wrote:
| > Viewing the ambient "Commute to Work" time estimates on Smart
| Displays. You can still ask for commute times and get directions
| by voice.
|
| They're going to take this little piece of convenience for me
| that I always use. Sad :-(
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Wow, Bixby will finally be more useful than GA! Good job, Google!
| Bye!
| no_streams wrote:
| Have any open-source voice assistants reached a half-usable
| state?
| vzaliva wrote:
| "Using your voice to send an email" - how's that not useful?!
| E.g. running late for a meeting and send a quick email from your
| car.
| BeetleB wrote:
| I bought Google Home/speakers in 2018 and still use them.
|
| Since I bought them, there have been almost 0 improvements that
| I've seen. A lot of potential gone to waste. That they're
| sunsetting features is not a surprise.
|
| I don't know if Alexa is better, but I always tell my friends to
| buy those instead of Google Homes.
| gerash wrote:
| When Amazon echo came out, all the flaws of voice assistant were
| visible and it looked like a glorified kitchen timer but it's
| surprising how little they improved over the years. Nonetheless
| Google executives rushed to copy Alexa.
|
| At the same time the same executives did not incorporate LLMs
| into the Assistant when Google invented the tech.
|
| These layoffs should've fired all those dead-weight executives
| and the CEO for good measure yet we see the rank and file losing
| their job
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