Google Assistant will now serve as a news host for people, allowing users to command the virtual assistant to play a mix of news and audio stories.
Google Assistant will start serving as a news host on connected devices, delivering audio stories from various news websites.
Digital audio is fast becoming a big deal.
Over 75 percent of the U.S. internet users will listen to digital audio formats like podcasts and music streams once a month this year. What’s more, most of these audio listenings occur on a mobile device.
Now, Google has found a new way to tap into the growing digital audio market.
On Tuesday, the search engine company announced a new function called “Your News Update” on its digital assistant. As you may have guessed, the feature provides a mix of audio short stories on command.
A product manager at Google, Liz Gannes, wrote in a blog post:
“Today, we’re introducing Your News Update, a smarter way to listen to the news hosted by the Google Assistant. You can try it today by updating your Assistant news settings.”
So, how does it work?
Google Assistant as a News Host for Audio Stories
Users can activate the News Update feature with the command; “Hey Google, play me the news.” In response, the digital assistant provides a mix of short stories.
The artificial intelligence program sorts the stories based on a user’s interests, history, preferences, and location. Also, users will be able to listen to the top stories from major media websites. These include AP, CBS, Politico, CNN, Fox News, among others
As the listening time increases, Google Assistant can dive deeper into your interests to provide long-form content. Like a news host, the digital assistant would introduce which publishers and updates are next.
Currently, Your News Update is in the English language, and it’s only available in the United States. However, Google says the rest of the world should have access to it in the coming year.
Amazon offers a similar feature called “Flash Briefing” on Alexa-powered devices.
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