Every time Bollywood’s all-time favourite villain Ajit invoked the services of his assistant, Mona Darling obliged, thanklessly, pretty much like a machine that’s eager to serve. While Mona Darling’s intelligence levels were questionable then, she seems to have reinvented herself in a more useful and brainier avatar. This time, of course, she has gone virtual — and sits in your smart phone, willing to act out your commands.
The new-age Mona Darling is the Google Assistant. All you need to do is activate it by pressing a new button in the bottom left hand corner of the phone.
What’s probably the most interesting enhancement is its integration with Google Lens, which the company refers to as ‘a computational vision engine’. Essentially, this is an intelligent imaging feature that ‘understands’ the image and provides contextual information about it. Today, you can point your Google Assistant at a signboard in a foreign language and it will decipher it in the language of your choice!
In order to truly unlock the potential of the Assistant, the company is tying up with various smart phone and smart home device manufacturers such as LG, Onkyo, Panasonic, Sony, etc., to provide in-built Assistant capabilities to global buyers.
Google’s digital Assistant has been around for a few months, competing for your attention with Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa, but a few enhancements have been made this year that elevate the stature of the Google offering beyond a run-of-the-mill assistant.
At this year’s Google I/O, the company’s annual developer jamboree, Google announced that you no longer need voice to interact with the Assistant. You can text message your assistant about calendar appointments, nearby restaurants, fuel stations, florists, pretty much everything you need.
And coming after Amazon’s Echo speaker, Google’s Home serves as an audio remote to play music, select TV shows, even make landline or mobile telephone calls — and, of course, talk to the Assistant
While Google Assistant already commands a user base in excess of 100 million, it will soon spread its tentacles to the Apple iPhone, further boosting its fandom. It’s an interesting scenario, akin to a sports team travelling to an ‘away’ venue and getting home support there as well. Of course, the fact that Google Assistant’s core brain is powered by Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning means that as more and more people use it, it will become more and more intelligent, which is good news for us as users. Well, Mona Darling has just found herself more fans, and this time around, she’s here to stay — inside your smart phone and in your life!
Disclaimer: Just in case the gender of Mona irks the feminist (or wannabe feminist) in you, we would like to clarify that we are equally happy to call on Manish bhai, instead).
