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.

25 of 38 comments (clear)

  1. Reality outstrips satire, yet again by Ann+O'Nymous-Coward · · Score: 1

    And Google laughs all the way to the bank.

    1. Re:Reality outstrips satire, yet again by quenda · · Score: 2

      The headline does sound like an Onion article. But its getting harder and harder to distinguish reality from The Onion.
      Come November 9, I may have to seriously consider the possibility that I am living inside a Matrix-y simulation inside an Onion article of an advanced civilisation.

  2. Re: Notice by LifesABeach · · Score: 1

    How could that be bad?

  3. maybe they should personify a paperclip. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    maybe they should personify a paperclip.

  4. commentsubjectsaredumb by Falos · · Score: 2

    Setting aside how funny this is or well it works, it seems a reasonable place to throw a few bucks. While it won't be enough to tip my decisions, I've seen the Cortana easter eggs; despite not being a functionality, flavor can definitely increase a feature's appeal and, perhaps more importantly, branding. The industry is desperate to crack the code that causes nonsense like Over9000 to go pandemic, but this can have a similar effect (at a far tinier, subtler level).

    Sure, it can backfire if you half-ass it, but apparently they're serious enough to spend a little money. Whether the hires are well-chosen is left as an exercise for the flamewars.

    1. Re:commentsubjectsaredumb by ColdWetDog · · Score: 1

      "I'll be here until Google cans this thing, try the veal."

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    2. Re:commentsubjectsaredumb by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      So are more appealing response system to draw the user or is that the person to be used, into more openly responding to the system. For the system to be effective it must analyse the used (lets not call them the user any more), for effective response, the more accurate the analysis, the more the used can be drawn into being used by the system. This enables the alphabet company to work more effectively with the alphabet agencies in order to properly control and motivate the targeted individual or more accurately all the targeted individuals. This to more accurately reflect their intent, perhaps they should consider simply relying on the existing cartoon villain voices (oh look, 'Big Brother' is to be a computer system, that will turn out well).

      Attempting to use voice control seems to be a produce pretty much random results, unless you stick to just a couple of really simple commands and for me personally if the phone responding with a cartoon villain voice it would be much more fun swearing at it. I personally would find the privacy invasive smarmy smooth talk to be quite annoying, sort of like teaching the system how to behave like a used car salesman, your buddy, your friend, the one who will sell you a really good car at a price they will lose money on.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  5. Jar Jar Binks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    When i think of a big entertainment company using focus groups to make its character "more loose and vibrant" i think of Jar Jar Binks.

    1. Re:Jar Jar Binks by Visarga · · Score: 1

      Making a more personable assistant would analogous to eye candy in web design. A certain amount of it is useful.

  6. Humor setting .... by PPH · · Score: 1

    .... 75%

    Assistant: "Confirmed. Self destruct sequence in T minus 10, 9..."

    "Let's make that sixty percent."

    Assistant: "Sixty percent, confirmed. Knock knock."

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
    1. Re:Humor setting .... by Dahamma · · Score: 2

      You make a good point... why are they hiring writers from the Onion when there are thousands of good writers in Hollywood or the video game industry?

      The Onion specializes in brutal, bitingly dry satire. Not so great at witty banter and DIALOG. Pretty sure if I ask an "AI" assistant a question I'd prefer a useful, relevant, and personable answer, not a monologue about the banality of middle America.

      I want my personal assistant's bon mots to be whoever wrote the filler dialog to The Wire, Archer, Baldur's Gate II, or Mass Effect (among hundreds of other valid examples)...

    2. Re:Humor setting .... by Shane_Optima · · Score: 2

      The very first thing I tried to do with my friend's Echo was to activate the self destruct sequence. It was immensely disappointing to get a "don't understand" response instead of "Does the first officer concur?"

      They may be completely useless, but easter eggs make excellent first impressions. You shouldn't necessarily need joke writers for it, though. Easiest way to figure out what to say in response to the user is to simply field test the crap out of it and google any curious-sounding repeated questions that you notice. That, plus maybe you get a meme database and try to include most of the more popular ones. You don't have to spam the user with references; just respond intelligently if they appear to be alluding to one.

  7. These systems need a mood engine by mykro76 · · Score: 1

    It doesn't matter how much material is programmed in, after a few days the user will have exhausted it. A mood engine will let the system respond to external events and behave accordingly; chirpy on sunny days, grumpy on cloudy days, encouraging and pushy when your calendar is busy, and lazy on weekends.

  8. 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.

    1. Re:Uninterested in a personal relationship by Wycliffe · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Exactly this. I currently prefer google voice over siri because it's more accurate but also because it doesn't try to be clever.
      It annoys the crap out of me when I ask siri a question like 'Can you do XYZ?" and it replies with "Who me?".
      A simple "NO" or "I don't understand the question" would be much preferred.

    2. Re:Uninterested in a personal relationship by Visarga · · Score: 1

      I want it to understand context more than the past 2 lines of conversation, I want it to have a common sense (try "What is heavier, a dog or an elephant?" and see if it knows), I want it to do simple reasoning, to be extensible with APIs and use scripts, and yes, I want it to make pointless conversation and not default to web search every time conversation falls outside its knowledge graph. Maybe it could run a web search and extract the relevant information from it into a text reply. Assistants shouldn't need to default to web search.

    3. Re:Uninterested in a personal relationship by Buchenskjoll · · Score: 2

      You can have that. Just set the language to German.

      --
      -- Make America hate again!
  9. Re:The Biggest Joke of All by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 1

    The idea that anyone actually planning anything is discussing actual plans in the living room.

    We have an Echo. It's a nice device and we're looking for a version 2 be it from Google or Apple. Almost all of our lights are on Z-wave with a few Hues mixed in.

    I've always assumed the NSA was always listening so they can go ahead and listen to dinner plans. It takes nothing to unplug it. Step into another room.

    Do you think the planners of the American Revolution walked around town mixing war and dinner plans where anyone could hear? A high school tech class should be able to build a Faraday's caged, sound proofed "cone of silence" in a weekend.

    I don't say anything in front of Alexa or Ok Google I wouldn't say to my wife in a super market or restaurant where the NSA could be sitting next to me.

  10. Re:The Biggest Joke of All by AHuxley · · Score: 1

    Yes its all been done for the "ads", forget PRISM :)
    Facebook doesn't listen through your phone's mic -- except when it does (Jun 6, 2016)
    http://www.computerworld.com/a...
    Is your smartphone listening to you? (2 March 2016)
    http://www.bbc.com/news/techno...
    Google looks to patent tech that listens to calls to promote ads (23 March 2012)
    https://www.cnet.com/au/news/g...
    Is nothing off limits? Now Google plans to spy on background noise in your phone calls to bombard you with tailored adverts (23 March 2012)
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sci...
    The jokes are a way to soften the creepy dystopian live mic feeling as the ads play back and the security services get their daily take?

    --
    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  11. Re:The Biggest Joke of All by Alain+Williams · · Score: 1

    I've always assumed the NSA was always listening so they can go ahead and listen to dinner plans. It takes nothing to unplug it. Step into another room.

    NSA Operative 1: After 2 days they people at #42 have switched off their echo.

    NSA Operative 2: Quick: scan the last 5 minutes of conversation.

    NSA Operative 1: key words: plot fertiliser garden mole.

    NSA Operative 2: Oh, they are worried about a spy, plotting to make a fertiliser bomb.

    NSA Operative 1: Better send in the SWAT team to check them out.

  12. Re:The Biggest Joke of All by Visarga · · Score: 1

    > The idea that anyone would trust Google with a microphone always listening in their living room itself feels like an article from The Onion. The idea that anyone would entrust their web search logs to be collected by one company ... seems more dangerous.

  13. Loose and vibrant by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 2

    already working on making Google's upcoming Assistant AI voice service feel more loose and vibrant

    That sounds like they're making a completely different kind of "assistant."

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  14. Don't need jokes. by lfp98 · · Score: 1

    Give it the voice of the computer from (the original) Star Trek and I'll buy it in a minute.

    1. Re:Don't need jokes. by bickerdyke · · Score: 1

      Let's just hope for the best:

      https://tech.slashdot.org/stor...

      --
      bickerdyke
  15. Just the facts, ma'am by RogueWarrior65 · · Score: 2

    I don't want a joke unless I specifically as for it. Case in point: last year I was driving from AZ to CA on I-8 and my speedometer cable broke so I couldn't tell how fast I was going. I thought, "My phone has GPS which can give me my speed so I'll ask Siri." "Hey, Siri, how fast am I going?" She responded, "I've been wondering that for a while." Great, thanks for nothing, smartass.