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Google Technology

Google extends Assistant compatibility to broader range of Android phones

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By John Glenday | Reporter

February 27, 2017 | 2 min read

Google is doubling down on its voice activated smartphone tool Google Assistant by extending its reach to all smartphones running the latest iteration of its Android operating system.

Google’s answer to Apple’s Siri, the service allowed people to use voice commands to interact with their phones by issuing commands and posing questions but has been restricted to Pixel phones only until now.

Among the first new phones to receive the functionality is LG’s G6 ahead of a broader roll-out to all phones running Android 6.0 Marshmallow or 7.0 Nougat.

Gummi Hafsteinsson, product lead for Google Assistant, remarked: “With this update, hundreds of millions of Android users will now be able to try out the Google Assistant.”

The market for AI-powered digital assistants has been hotting up in recent months with Amazon’s Alexa set to arrive on Huawei branded phones and the Moto Z while Telefonica have just unveiled their own Aura tool.

Unlike its rivals however, Google Assistant is geared more toward prompting questions through more natural conversation, becoming more intelligent the more conversations it engages in. At present the service is only available to English speaking users in the United States with Australia, Canada and the UK next in line for the update.

Other languages are expected to be catered for in due course with a recent survey finding that a majority of consumers were now ready to embrace AI services.

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