Google transformed the personal assistant Assistant in the best software of its kind for mobile phones and smart speakers, beating Siri and Amazon Alexa in many ways. Many people think that Assistant is very human, and those from Google explained to the American press how they managed to make the personal assistant seem so close to a real person in terms of interaction with the users who use them.
Google used actors to record the voices for Assistant, and even created stories for the people who had to say all the expressions recorded by the company. For one of the voices, the people from Google asked the woman to consider that Assistant is actually a person who was born in Colorado and does not have a specific accent, something very important for a software of this kind.
Google: Here's HOW Assistant made it so HUMAN
Google has created for others very complex voices and stories that describe a person's complete life, including the fact that they won a certain amount of money in a gambling game, or that another worked as an assistant for a TV show. Google created very complex stories for each actor who was going to record voices for the Assistant, in order to help people better get into the skin of the character and better represent the character they have to play.
"Google Assistant is "humble, it's helpful, a little playful at times," says Gummi Hafsteinsson, one of the Assistant's head product managers. But having a personality also helps make a voice relatable. When Giangola was training the actress whose voice was recorded for Google Assistant, he gave her a backstory to help her produce the exact degree of upbeat geekiness he wanted. The backstory is charmingly specific: She comes from Colorado, a state in a region that lacks a distinctive accent. "She's the youngest daughter of a research librarian and a physics professor who has a BA in art history from Northwestern," Giangola continues. When she was a child, she won $100,000 on Jeopardy: Kids Edition. She used to work as a personal assistant to "a very popular late-night-TV satirical pundit." And she enjoys kayaking."
Google, unlike other companies, understood that the voices interpreted for the Assistant must make it clear that the user is interacting with a real person, not with an audio recording made in a dark room. Google took care of all the details regarding the voice recording for the Assistant, and so the world has a very good experience, which is similar to that of interacting with a real person, something that does not happen with other personal assistants.
