Slashdot Mirror
Google's Assistant Is Now Bilingual (theverge.com)
Google has announced a new feature for Google Assistant: it's bilingual now. The digital assistant will automatically recognize what language is being spoken to it and respond appropriately -- all without requiring you to change any settings. The Verge reports: You'll be able to set up Assistant to understand and respond to any two of the following languages: English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese. Google adds that it intends on "expanding to more languages in the coming months." The behind-the-scenes tech to make this happen is pretty interesting, as Google explains in an accompanying blog post. To make Assistant receptive to two languages simultaneously, the company created a new language-identification model (which it calls LangID) that runs as soon as the software detects speech.
Assistant actually runs LangID in parallel with two separate language processing models that try to transcribe what's been said in the user's two preset languages. Once LangID has identified the language, Assistant then cancels the incorrect transcription and routes all processing power to focus on the correct one. In order to speed up the process of identification, LangID doesn't just consider vocabulary; it also signals the frequency at which each language is used and the type of device it's used with.
Assistant actually runs LangID in parallel with two separate language processing models that try to transcribe what's been said in the user's two preset languages. Once LangID has identified the language, Assistant then cancels the incorrect transcription and routes all processing power to focus on the correct one. In order to speed up the process of identification, LangID doesn't just consider vocabulary; it also signals the frequency at which each language is used and the type of device it's used with.
I see you read sentence two, where it sounds like it's a higher-order polyglot, but didn't make it to sentence four, where it's bilingual.
Whether that's for reasons of processing power, or language-detection accuracy rates dropping as the number of potential languages goes up, I don't know.
The other day, the wife and I were watching a foreign language TV program. No dubbing, just subtitles. I think it was Swedish.
Suddenly, Google Assistant on the wife's phone started. I have no idea what it heard that triggered it, but it wasn't English.
Surely Google should know we speak English exclusively? So what's the point?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I'd expect Spanish and Italian to be challenging even *without* adding a third language.
Indeed. I have found that, as long as you are saying something simple, speaking Spanish in Italy works fairly well.
In the movie "The Tourist" the character played by Johnny Depp speaks Spanish to Italians thru the whole movie.
My missus cant wait until it's cunnilingual
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
This presumably helps with code-switching, which bilingual people tend to do all-the-freaking-time. They'll start a sentence in one language, forget how to say something in that language (or don't like how it sounds in that one), then switch to another, sometimes for only a few words before switching back.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.