The American Internet giant (subsidiary of Alphabet group) kicked off its annual conference for developers (I / O) in Mountain View, California, unveiling a new device connected to the house, Google Home and a messaging application, Allo. They have in common to be made more “ smart ” with the integration of a virtual assistant ( “ Google assistant “) fed artificial intelligence and capable learn as and as it is used.
Google Home is positioned as a competitor to Echo, a device that Amazon launched late 2014 and combines a speaker and a personal assistant voice-controlled, able to answer questions or to control objects connected in the house.
Echo has the appearance of a vertical black cylinder. Google Home also has quite a cylindrical shape, but the user can choose the color of the rounded base to match its interior.
As Echo, Google Home aims to become “ a control center for your whole house ” assured Mario Queiroz, vice president of Google. It can play music, including simultaneously in several rooms, control objects connected to turn off or turn on the light …
Google Integration Wizard also allows it to communicate with the user, with a possible extension of these interactions in the real world. May be asked to check a travel itinerary, allowing him to report that the flight is delayed; then ask him accordingly to change the time of booking for dinner after landing.
Google ensures that we can even ask him about absolutely anything: the virtual assistant integrates its search engine, as well as years of development of artificial intelligence technologies, and can therefore “ answer questions difficult to manage for other assistants ” according to Mario Queiroz.
Patrick Moorhead, an analyst at Moor Insight and Strategy, Google Home “ could dramatically reduce the sales potential for Echo “, because the quality of the virtual intelligence technology risk to have a decisive effect, and “ Google probably win face Amazon .”
– Promises –
The same artificial intelligence technologies are also embedded in Allo application, allowing it to move beyond the traditional exchange of text or pictures the many services already on the market.
This allows the user to suggest several possible answers to the last message received, on which there is to type or not to accept an invitation to dinner, but also comment photos with proposals like “ yummy clams ” after a picture of a dish with this ingredient.
“ This is possible only because we have married our strength in visual recognition and natural language understanding by computer ,” commented Erik Kay, an engineer Google.
Rather than a real interlocutor, Allo may also allow for dialogue with Google assistant, and also has a mode “ incognito ” to enhanced security, where messages are encrypted and can be set an expiration date for example.
The boss of Google, Sundar Pichai enthused of progress in artificial intelligence and learning through the computer, through which “ things previously thought impossible might actually be possible “.
He talked of computer systems capable of recognizing what they “ see ” and improve over time used to detect cancers. “ It’s still early (…) but we can see the promise of using machine learning “, he noted.
And call to imagine “ that top researchers on climate change or teachers could do with the power of artificial intelligence to assist .”
Facebook is already testing it since last year also the integration of a virtual assistant ( “ M “) to its messaging service Messenger, but only a limited number of ‘Messenger users have already been able to try.
Microsoft, which also has a virtual assistant, Cortana, also talked a lot about artificial intelligence at its own developer conference a few weeks ago.
“ So far, the major players -Microsoft Facebook- and make big promises. Now Google arrives and says he can do it “, however Judge Danny Sullivan, founder of the specialized site Search Engine Land.
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