Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Google Hires Joke Writers From Pixar and The Onion To Make Assistant More Personable (cnet.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the satirical-humor dept.

One of the biggest announcements made at Google I/O earlier this year and at Google's hardware launch event this past week was Google Home, an always-listening wireless speaker that features the Google Assistant. The Google Assistant is similar to Amazon Echo's voice assistant named Alexa, as it can deliver search results, sports scores, calendar information, and a whole lot more. But in an effort to make the Assistant more personable to better compete with Siri, Alexa, and Cortana, Google has decided to hire joke writers from Pixar and The Onion. An anonymous reader quotes CNET: According to a Wall Street Journal report, comedy and joke writers from Pixar movies and the Onion are already working on making Google's upcoming Assistant AI voice service feel more loose and vibrant. The development of compelling voice AI will need to start drawing from deeper, more entertaining wells, especially as these home hubs try to have conversations all day long. Current voice AI like Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa on the Echo try to engage with personality, and they even tell jokes (usually, bad ones). But, as these services aim to be entirely voice-based, like the upcoming Google Home hub, they'll need to feel more alive and less canned. Google Home debuts this November, and the upcoming Google Pixel phone, arriving in stores and online on October 20, is the first Google product featuring the new Assistant voice service.

1 of 38 comments (clear)

  1. Uninterested in a personal relationship by Oligonicella · · Score: 3, Insightful

    with my appliances. That's for some of the people I know, not any machines.

    I don't want it cracking jokes some marketer thinks I should hear - I have TV for that.
    I don't want it cooing soothing burbles if the "AI" figures I'm not feeling up to snuff. I have friends for that.
    I don't want it trying to carry on a faux conversation with me. I get enough of that crap in the real world.

    In short, if I at all want a voice interactive machine, I want it to listen to what I command, interpret said command correctly, execute it correctly and then, if warranted, respond with the results.