Pandemic gives fresh momentum to digital voice technology

WASHINGTON - In a world suddenly fearful of touch, voice technology is getting a fresh look.

Voice-activated systems such as Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa and Apple's Siri have seen strong growth in recent years, and the virus pandemic could accelerate that, analysts say.

Voice assistants are not only answering queries and shopping, but also being used for smart home control and for a range of business and medical applications which could see increased interest as people seek to limit personal contact.

"Voice has already made significant inroads into the smart home space and voice control can mean avoiding commonly touched surfaces around the home from smartphones, to TV remotes, light switches, thermostats, door handles and more," said analyst Jonathan Collins of ABI Research.

The pandemic is likely to provide "additional motivation and incentive for voice control in the home that will help drive awareness and adoption for a range of additional smart home devices and applications," Collins said.

ABI estimates that voice control device shipments for smart home devices hit 141 million last year, and in 2020 will grow globally by close to 30 percent.

For the broader market of voice assistants, Juniper Research estimates 4.2 billion devices in use this year, growing to 8.4 billion by 2024, with much of the interactions on smartphones.

SMART LOCKS, DOORBELLS

Collins said he expected to see growing interest in smart locks and doorbells, along with other smart home systems, to eliminate the need for personal contact and face-to-face interaction as a result of the pandemic.

Avi Greengart, a technology analyst and consultant with Techsponential, said data is not yet available but that "anecdotally, voice assistant usage is way up" as a result of lockdowns.

Greengart said he expects a wider range of business applications for voice technologies in response to health and safety concerns.

"Looking forward, office spaces will need move towards more touch-free controls; voice can be a solution, although motion triggers for lighting is often easier and more friction-free," he said.

"However, I do expect smart speakers -- along with an emailed list of commands -- to be a common feature at hotels and other rental properties. The fewer touch points, the better."

POST-PANDEMIC OUTLOOK

Julian Issa of Futuresource Consulting said there appears to be "an uptick in the use of voice assistants since the virus outbreak" during the pandemic.

"Whilst avoiding touching surfaces may play a small part in this, it is mainly due to consumers spending far more time at home with their devices," Issa said.

Chris Pennell, another Futuresource analyst, said he expects adoption of digital assistants is likely to accelerate, "especially in client facing areas such as healthcare, retail and entertainment."

One example of this already in use is a Mayo Clinic tool using Amazon Alexa which allows people to assess their symptoms and access information on the virus.

Other medical applications are also in the works for voice technologies.

Veton Kepuska, a Florida Tech computer engineering professor who specializes in speech recognition technologies, is seeking to develop voice-activated medical robots that can help limit physical contact and contagion.

"If we had this infrastructure in place, we would have been better off today," said Kepuska, who was spurred by the COVID-19 outbreak to seek funding for the research effort.

Kepuska said this effort could lead to a "humanoid" medical robot which can take over many tasks from doctors or nurses with voice interaction.

"The pandemic has created a situation where we need to think about how to deliver services to people who need our help without putting ourselves in danger," he said.

Agence France-Presse

Apple, Google, Amazon eye common standard for smart home devices

WASHINGTON - Amazon, Apple and Google announced plans Wednesday to develop a common technology standard for smart home products, in a move aimed at enabling more connected devices to speak to each other.

The move aims to bring together the variety of standards for devices operating on digital assistants such as Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Apple's Siri.

The project "aims to improve the consumer experience of trying to use smart home products that aren't compatible with each other," according to a statement by the new working group.

"We believe that the protocol has the potential to be widely adopted across home systems and assistants such as Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, Apple's Siri, Google Assistant, and others."

The new project also includes the Zigbee Alliance, an earlier effort to develop a common wireless standard for connected devices that includes manufacturers such as Samsung, retailers such as Ikea and other tech firms including NXP Semiconductors.

"The industry working group will take an open-source approach for the development and implementation of a new, unified connectivity protocol," the statement said.

"The project intends to use contributions from market-tested smart home technologies from Amazon, Apple, Google, Zigbee Alliance, and others."

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Google Assistant to be 'news host' on devices

WASHINGTON - Google said Tuesday its digital assistant will serve as a "news host" on its connected devices to deliver stories from a variety of its media partners.

The feature called Your News Update will be activated by asking the Google Assistant to read the news.

The artificial intelligence program will deliver "a mix of short news stories chosen in that moment based on your interests, location, user history and preferences, as well as the top news stories out there," said product manager Liz Gannes in a blog post.

The assistant will offer stories from partners including CBS, Politico, Fox News and CNN based on user preferences and other factors.

It can offer news, for example, about the user's favorite sports teams or specific local or business events.

"In between stories, the Google Assistant serves as your smart news host that introduces which publishers and updates are next," Gannes said.

The feature is available in English in the United States, and will expand internationally next year, for people with compatible smartphones and connected speakers.

It is activated by saying, "Hey Google, play me the news."

Amazon offers a similar "flash briefing" feature for its Alexa-powered devices.

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Apple halts Siri response grading program after privacy concerns

Apple Inc said on Friday it suspended its global program where it analyzed recordings from users interacting with its voice assistant Siri, after some privacy concerns were raised about the program.

Apple's decision comes in the light of a report from in Guardian last week which said the company's contractors around the globe tasked with reviewing the recordings regularly heard confidential information and private conversations.

"While we conduct a thorough review, we are suspending Siri grading globally," an Apple spokeswoman said in a statement, adding that in a future software update, users will be able to opt out of the program.

Siri, Apple's iconic voice assistant, allows users to work their iPhone without using their hands, and can send messages, make calls and open multiple applications with voice commands alone.

Consumers have become accustomed to calling out names for popular voice assistants, such as Amazon.com Inc's Alexa, Google Inc's Google Assistant, among others.

In an effort to perform quality checks and improve the voice assistant's responses, contractors graded Siri's answers to user queries, the Guardian reported. They also looked at whether the response was triggered accidentally, without a deliberate query from the user, the newspaper said.

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Google’s Duplex uses AI to mimic humans

ALBANY, California — On a recent afternoon at the Lao Thai Kitchen restaurant, the telephone rang and the caller ID read “Google Assistant.” Jimmy Tran, a waiter, answered the phone. The caller was a man with an Irish accent hoping to book a dinner reservation for two on the weekend.

This was no ordinary booking. It came through Google Duplex, a free service that uses artificial intelligence to call restaurants and — mimicking a human voice — speak on our behalf to book a table. The feature, which had a limited release about a year ago, recently became available to a larger number of Android devices and iPhones.

The voice of the Irish man sounded eerily human. When asked whether he was a robot, the caller immediately replied, “No, I’m not a robot,” and laughed.

“It sounded very real,” Tran said in an interview after hanging up the call with Google. “It was perfectly human.”

We’re extending Duplex to the web, previewing how the Google Assistant can help you complete a task online, like renting a car or buying movie tickets. More later this year. #io19 pic.twitter.com/lSWH5Rz72X — Google (@Google) May 7, 2019

Google later confirmed, to our disappointment, that the caller had been telling the truth: He was a person working in a call center. The company said that about 25 percent of calls placed through Duplex started with a human and that about 15 percent of those that began with an automated system had a human intervene at some point.

We tested Duplex for several days, calling more than a dozen restaurants, and our tests showed a heavy reliance on humans. Among our four successful bookings with Duplex, three were done by people. But when calls were actually placed by Google’s artificially intelligent assistant, the bot sounded very much like a real person and was even able to respond to nuanced questions.

In other words, Duplex, which Google first showed off last year as a technological marvel using AI, is still largely operated by humans. While AI services like Google’s are meant to help us, their part-machine, part-human approach could contribute to a mounting problem: the struggle to decipher the real from the fake, from bogus reviews and online disinformation to bots posing as people.

Here are the results of our experiment.

Google’s AI is eerily human, when it works

To test Google Duplex, we used a pair of Google’s Pixel smartphones, which include the company’s virtual assistant by default. (Apple’s iPhone users can try Duplex by downloading the free Google Assistant app.) At the bottom of the screen, we pressed a button to summon the Google assistant and then said, “Book me a dinner reservation.”

Google’s assistant then loaded a list of nearby restaurants. For the restaurants that took reservations only over the phone, Google offered to step in and place the call with Duplex.

We tried using Duplex more than a dozen times. Several restaurants, like Henry’s Hunan in San Francisco and China Village in Albany, California, rejected our requests for a table of 2 to 4 people because they took reservations only for tables of 10 people or more.

Eventually, we secured 4 reservations in Albany: 2 separate reservations at Nomad Tibetan restaurant, one booking at Lao Thai Kitchen and one reservation at Bowl’d Korean Rice Bar. We witnessed or reviewed each of the phone calls, and the restaurants were made aware that we were testing Duplex before they picked up the phone.

Only the reservation at Bowl’d, which we witnessed at the restaurant, was made entirely with Google’s AI service. The bot introduced itself as Google’s automated booking service, followed by a request to book a table for Tuesday.

The call demonstrated the ability of Google’s AI operator to insert pauses and “ums” to mimic a human — in effect making the interaction feel more lifelike and less scripted.

At several moments during the call, the restaurant’s manager, Jin Park, acted confused and asked the caller to state the party size and reservation date. The bot patiently answered the questions again and again. Then, Park threw a curveball: “Are there any kids?”

The Google bot was quick to improvise: “I’m actually booking on behalf of a client, so I’m not too sure,” he said.

“Everything was perfect,” Park said in an interview after conversing with the Google bot. “It’s like a real person talking.”

Park added that he was especially impressed with how the bot handled his question about whether there were children in the party.

But our experience with the other bookings was less impressive as they were all handled by humans. Google said that Duplex was sometimes relying on people in part because it was taking a conservative approach to be respectful toward businesses. Google will have a human involved in the call in a number of situations, like if the company is unsure of whether the business takes reservations, or if the user of the assistant might be a spammer.

Valerie Nygaard, a product manager working on Duplex, said that for our reservation at the Tibetan restaurant, the company might have had a person place the call because it lacked signals indicating the restaurant took reservations.

The next day, however, we tested Duplex at the same Tibetan restaurant, and it again used a human caller despite our earlier, successful booking. So Duplex doesn’t appear to learn quickly.

Duplex needs lots of data to improve

In recent years, the development of AI has accelerated thanks to what are called neural networks, complex mathematical systems that can learn tasks by analyzing vast amounts of data. By analyzing thousands of dog photos, for instance, a neural network can learn to recognize a dog.

This technology has significantly improved a machine’s ability to recognize spoken words, understand how these words are used and even generate speech on its own. With Duplex, Google is combining these various tasks into a single system. It works because Google has focused on a small domain: restaurant reservations.

Building this kind of system requires large amounts of data, and Google may be using human callers to generate data that can help “train” future versions of the system.

Nick Fox, the Google executive overseeing its assistant, said the company was not aggressively trying to eliminate human involvement from Duplex because that could make the experience for business owners worse. Instead, he said, Google was trying to improve the automated system over time and slowly decrease the need for humans to intervene.

Not so smart after all

In an era of tech companies trumpeting the arrival of AI, today’s technology is not quite as intelligent as it might seem.

Mark Zuckerberg promises that AI can identify and remove toxic content from Facebook, but his company still employs thousands of humans to do the job. When Amazon boasts of all the robots in its distribution centers, blue-collar workers are sorting through all the stuff moving through those giant warehouses.

Duplex is proficient at making a restaurant reservation over the phone, but much like Facebook, Google still leans on human intelligence. At any given moment, it is lifelike. But it struggles to deal with the unexpected.

“There are 3 things that are important when it comes to AI’s interactions with humans: context, context and context,” said Jerry Kaplan, author of “Humans Need Not Apply: A Guide to Wealth and Work in the Age of Artificial Intelligence” and a Stanford University lecturer on artificial intelligence. “Machines are very good with detail but terrible at context,” he said.

The general public doesn’t always see that bigger picture, partly because of the way companies market their technology. When Google first unveiled Duplex last year, it demonstrated making phone calls to a hair salon and a restaurant — handled with AI, without a mention of human intervention. The message was all about the power of the technology.

“This is like the footnotes in the TV ad,” Kaplan said. “The footnotes contradict the marketing message.”

At the same time, the technologies that underpin services like Google Duplex are improving at a remarkable rate. In time, it will become harder and harder to understand what is automated and what is human.

But we need to think long and hard about how this technology should be used and how it shouldn’t. Sorting through all the questions is difficult enough. It gets even harder if we don’t have a clear understanding of what the technology can do.


2019 New York Times News Service

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When it comes to disclosing sponsors, your Google Assistant may be mute

SAN FRANCISCO -- On stage at an investor conference last month, Google's Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler identified a vexing challenge for the company's most prized app: its virtual assistant.

Responding to user searches out loud through Google Assistant is not ideal for generating revenue, Schindler suggested.

When results are visible, not merely oral, "you have room for advertising, of course," said Schindler, whose company grosses an estimated $70 billion annually through ads above search results.

The Alphabet Inc company declined to elaborate on Schindler's remarks. But Google's conundrum is one facing several big tech companies whose users increasingly seek help from voice-enabled speakers and gadgets: how to deliver greater convenience while still generating the ad revenue that traditionally has funded free searches.

The question is most acute for Google, which holds the world's biggest search advertising business.

So far, consumers generally get a brief answer from virtual assistants without the disturbance of ads. And tech companies have not shown how they would include the "Sponsored" or "Ad" disclaimers that regulators in the United States and elsewhere require with paid-for search results.

One Google Assistant feature already is close to violating disclosure rules, according to five advertising attorneys contacted by Reuters. Google contends it is in compliance.

The feature recommends plumbers and other local home service providers without disclosing that the results draw from a curated database mainly composed of companies that joined a Google marketing program.

"It's not a completely clean recommendation," said Michelle Cohen, an attorney with expertise in marketing rules at Ifrah Law in Washington, DC. "If there's a financial commitment, you're supposed to disclose it."

Conversing with assistants is routine for millions of people globally, whether on bedside alarm clocks, car audio systems or even high-end headphones. More than 1 billion such devices have Google Assistant, 100 million Amazon.com Inc's Alexa and at least 1 billion Apple Inc's Siri, according to the companies and estimates.

Regulators avoid stifling new technologies, said Richard Lawson, partner at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips and former consumer protection director in Florida's attorney general’s office. But he said, authorities will still ask, "How do you convey meaningful disclosures?"

At the conference, Schindler said ads on Google Assistant would be more "interesting" when responses are shown on a nearby screen, like a TV, smartphone, laptop or smart speaker with a display.

"Then we're exactly in the world that we deeply understand," Schindler said, with moneymaking options "very similar" to traditional search.

NEW SEARCH TECHNOLOGIES

The Federal Trade Commission, which regulates deceptive business practices in the United States, has long required search engines to inform users in a "noticeable and understandable" fashion when results are connected to financial relationships. That is why consumers see "Ad" or "Sponsored" labels next to the first few Google results on screens.

New search services that "talk" to consumers are not exempt from "the long-standing principle of making advertising distinguishable," the FTC said in letters to Google and other companies in 2013.

Consumers often complain to the commission about potential violations, and it prods companies into changing practices by threatening fines if the issues persist.

The FTC has not received complaints about ads on Google Assistant, according to results from a Freedom of Information Act request. And the agency declined to comment on whether it is scrutinizing any virtual assistants, though last year it charged a small search engine for prospective college students that included paid results without warning.

GOOGLE'S CHALLENGE

Google users have come to expect results from any relevant source on the web, except when using specialized tools like Google News or Google Flights that have a narrowed set of sources.

In 2017, Google Assistant adopted a specialty tool, Local Services, which offers only vetted businesses when US users search for domestic help such as plumbers and locksmiths.

Results come from a marketing program, known as Google Guarantee, in which members are licensed, insured and clear of legal issues, according to Google. It refunds consumers up to $2,000 if members botch a job.

Membership is free, but businesses need it to buy Local Services search ads from Google. And guaranteed businesses largely do buy those for queries like "plumber," Reuters found.

Google gets paid when users contact providers through the ads, which are labeled "Sponsored" on Google.com.

But when Google Assistant responds to "plumber" queries with the same "Google Guaranteed" options, the assistant does not offer any disclaimer or further explanation.

Google said in a statement that the results are not labeled as ads "because Google isn't paid for these results" when delivered on the Assistant rather than Google.com.

The advertising attorneys said users should be informed that Google Assistant results, even if not paid for, stem from a filtered database in which many businesses landed because they wanted to buy ads.

"Disclosing 'many of the recommended providers may participate in our referral network'...would be relevant and appropriate," said Cohen, the Washington, DC attorney.

In some cities, Google Assistant includes businesses vetted by partner search services HomeAdvisor and Porch. It does not mention that those services charge some businesses for customer leads.

Disclaimers vary in other types of searches, depending on how they are delivered. Google.com answers "flight to Los Angeles" with upcoming flights labeled as "Sponsored," and users who click on the label would learn that Google "may be compensated" by some of its data sources.

But Google Assistant's "Sponsored" label does not link to additional information. On smart speakers, the assistant reads only the lowest price without naming an airline.

It says nothing about sponsors. 

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Side-by-side: Google Home versus Amazon Echo

Thinking of getting a smart speaker for your home? Our resident tech expert makes a point-by-point comparison of the two most popular brands.

The smart home has been one of the great tech dreams for decades. The marketing and media of the 60s and 70s were filled with the promise of kitchen computers, while World’s Fairs and even cartoons like The Jetsons described robots that fulfilled homeowners’ every beck and call.

While we don’t quite yet have metal maids that can cook for us, the rest of the smart home dream is becoming more and more accessible each day. This is highlighted by the affordability and convenience of voice-controlled smart speakers, which offer virtual assistants that can control smart home devices through simple, natural language voice commands.

The top players in this industry are Google and Amazon, whose Home and Echo devices, respectively, have sold over a hundred million devices combined. But which one is the best smart speaker, and the best virtual assistant? Let’s pit them against each other and find out.

For the purposes of this comparison, we’ll only be looking at the standard Google Home and the standard Amazon Echo hardware, ignoring the smaller versions such as the Echo Dot, and display-equipped devices like the Echo Show.

Design
This is a mostly subjective competition. The Google Home has a unique design, and is almost like a modern sculpture. But the Amazon Echo’s simple cylindrical and wide variety of materials, including an optional wood finish, give it a classier, more timeless look that is suitable as an accent piece for any home.

Sound Quality
Google Home has plenty of punch to it, with a lot of bass that feels like it comes from a bigger speaker.  But it suffers from a loss in clarity. The Amazon Echo has a more reasonable amount of bass, as well as better volume, clarity, and overall quality.

Digital Assistant
Alexa, Amazon’s voice assistant, has a variety of “skills” that connect to plenty of third-party services and actions. However, Google Home takes the win here, because of Google Assistant’s powerful natural language system, which can recognize more complex questions and provide better answers. Google Assistant also supports chaining multiple commands together in one sentence, though you can have multiple preset actions with Alexa by creating custom routines.

Streaming Services
When you buy one of these devices, pick the one whose ecosystem you have more of an investment in. Choose Google Home for example if you have Play Music as your main deal, or Amazon Echo if you use Prime Music and Audible. Both of these devices support Spotify, though.

Smart Home Support
While both support the most popular smart home brands and systems, Amazon Alexa can control many more third-party devices than Google can. Look up all of your IoT and smart devices and see which virtual assistant they support. However, when in doubt, choose the Echo.

Pricing
The standard Google Home goes for $130, while the Amazon Echo is $100, giving a minor edge to Amazon in pricing.

Conclusion
Overall, the Amazon Echo wins the race by just a smidgen, offering better sound, having more third-party smart home support, and being cheaper than the Google Home. While Alexa isn’t quite as “intelligent” as Google Assistant, she more than makes up for it with a wider range of supported brands.

That said, both are great choices for the majority of people, thanks to cross-platform support for most smart home devices. You can’t go wrong either way. Smart speaker tech has matured enough that they can both be viable parts of everyone’s smart home.

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Gadget love forecast to grow in US despite trust issues

LAS VEGAS -- The trade group behind the Consumer Electronics Show set to start here Tuesday forecast that US gadget love will grow despite trust and privacy issues hammering the tech world.

The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) predicted that US retail revenue in the sector would climb to a record high $398 billion this year.

"There are so many cool things happening in the consumer electronics industry right now," said CTA vice president of market research Steve Koenig.

"We are fast approaching a new era of consumer technology."

Trends gaining momentum, and expected to be on display on the CES show floor, included super high resolution 8K televisions; blazingly-fast 5G wireless internet, and virtual aides such as Google Assistant and Amazon's Alexa woven into devices of all kinds.

The CTA forecast revenue growth in the US for smart phones, speakers, homes and watches along with televisions, drones, 'in-vehicle tech,' and streaming services.

Amid trade wars, geopolitical tensions and a decline in public trust, the technology sector is seeking to put its problems aside with CES, the annual extravaganza showcasing futuristic innovations.

The Jan. 8-11 Las Vegas trade event offers a glimpse into new products and services designed to make people's lives easier, fun and more productive, reaching across diverse sectors such as entertainment, health, transportation, agriculture and sports.

But the celebration of innovation will be mixed with concerns about public trust in new technology and other factors that could cool the growth of a sizzling economic sector.

"I think 2019 will be a year of trust-related challenges for the tech industry," said Bob O'Donnell of Technalysis Research.

CES features 4,500 exhibitors across 2.75 million square feet (250,000 square meters) of exhibit space showcasing artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality, smart homes, smart cities, sports gadgets and other cutting-edge devices. Some 182,000 trade professionals are expected.

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Google, Walmart unveil e-commerce partnership

SAN FRANCISCO - Google and Walmart on Tuesday announced a partnership that would make the retailer's products available on the internet giant's online shopping mall.

"Starting in late September, we'll be working with Google to offer hundreds of thousands of items for voice shopping via Google Assistant -- the largest number of items currently offered by a retailer through the platform," Marc Lore, Wal-Mart's head of e-commerce, said in a blog post.

Walmart will integrate Google Express, which already allows customers to purchase products of a large range of brands, such as Costco and the pharmacy Walgreen's, into its platform in a bid to take on online shopping giant Amazon.

Amazon has long made life difficult for Wal-Mart on the internet and is now also competing with it in the real world with its planned acquisition of supermarket chain, Whole Foods.

Wal-Mart's third-quarter results, released earlier this month, once again highlighted its persistent lag behind Amazon, even if the numbers were better than expected.

Google is also looking to expand its activities in online shopping, grouped together under its Google Home brand.

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Google heads to Apple turf in battle of digital assistants

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California - Google announced Wednesday it was bringing its digital assistant to Apple iPhones as part of its effort to win the battle with tech rivals on artificial intelligence.

At its annual developers conference at an outdoor concert-venue near its main campus here, Google unveiled its vision for computing centered around artificial intelligence.

"We are now witnessing a new shift in computing: the move from a mobile-first to an AI-first world," Google chief executive Sundar Pichai said during an opening presentation.

"It is forcing us to reimagine our products for a world that allows a more natural, seamless way of interacting with technology."

Those interactions, for Google, include using artificial intelligence to let people engage computers conversationally, have software anticipate needs, and let smartphone cameras "recognize" what they see.

"In an AI-first world, we are rethinking all of our products and applying machine learning to solve problems," Pichai said.

Google Assistant, the center of its AI efforts, is in a fierce battle with rivals such as Amazon's Alexa, Microsoft Cortana and Apple's Siri to be the top choice for use in smartphones as well as connected homes, cars and a range of other devices.

"Siri's got company, and all these other guys are pretty serious about it," said Gartner analyst Brian Blau.

Artificial intelligence is being woven into Google's free Gmail service, used by more than a billion people, for features such as suggesting responses to messages.

For example, opening an email containing an invitation to dinner might trigger a prompt to reply "I'm in."

SMARTPHONES GET EYES

Google machine vision capabilities are being used to enable services such as recognizing who is in pictures and what they are doing as well as translate languages in signs viewed through smartphone cameras, demonstrations showed.

Advanced "Lens" features are being added first to the Google Photo application, which is available free.

Aiming a smartphone camera at a flower will prompt it to be identified; while aiming it at a complex password and hotspot name on a router will let it automatically log into the wireless connection.

Google also unveiled a second-generation computer chip it designed specifically to improve cloud computing capabilities in data centers.

"We want Google Cloud to be the best cloud for machine learning," Pichai said.

He described the internet giant's core search service and its Google Assistant as the company's most important AI products.

Google Assistant, introduced last year, is now on more than 100 million devices, according to the team's vice president of engineering, Scott Huffman.

"We are really starting to crack the hard computer challenge of conversationality," Huffman said.

"Soon, with Google Lens, your assistant will be able to have a conversation about what you see."

Google used the conference to announce a software kit that will let developers build Assistant capabilities into robots, applications, and other computerized creations.

Google also announced enhancements to its Home personal assistant, adding abilities such as hands free telephone calls and acting as speakers for wireless audio.

ANDROID GETS LEAN

Developers cheered when talk turned to Google-backed mobile operating system Android.

Google announced that more than two billion devices powered by Android software are used monthly in a freshly passed milestone.

The coming version of Android, referred to simply as "O" for the time being, will also have boosted artificial intelligence features along with enhanced security, executives showed.

Google is also crafting a lighter version of Android, referred to as "Go," designed for maximum performance on low-cost, entry-level smartphones in developing countries where internet bandwidth is lean or expensive.

Google said that while it was happy with the momentum of its Daydream virtual reality platform based on using smartphone as screens in headsets, it is working with partners on stand-alone virtual reality gear.

Partners in the endeavor include Vive-maker HTC and Lenovo, according to Google virtual reality team vice president Clay Bavor.

The gathering, which attracted some 7,000 developers on site and had thousands more watching online, focused on software with little mention of hardware, noted analyst Blau.

"There is a continuing trend where devices are becoming devalued and what is on the screen is becoming more valuable," Blau said.

"With AI, all the apps are getting upgraded so they don't need new hardware."

source: news.abs-cbn.com