Google has started rolling out Continued Conversation feature to the Google Assistant today. Essentially, this feature removes the need of saying 'OK Google' or 'Hey Google' to activate the Assistant. Announced back at the Google I/O 2018, Continued Conversation is an optional setting which lets the user have a natural back-and-forth conversation with the Assistant without repeating “Hey Google” for each follow-up request. The new feature's roll out has started today to all the users, and you can turn it on in the Google Assistant app by going to Settings>Preferences>Continued Conversation and hitting the toggle.
With Continued Conversation turned on, after you ask the Assistant a question, you can ask a follow-up, set a reminder, or add something to your shopping list without having to say “Hey Google” each time. You can say “thank you” or “stop” once you’re done, or the conversation will be ended once the Assistant detects you're no longer talking to it.
However, do make a note that you’ll still need to activate your Assistant devices with “Ok Google,” “Hey Google,” or with a physical trigger, but with this new optional setting turned on, the Assistant will stay active for long enough to respond to follow up questions so you don't have to say the wake-up phrases as often.
“For the Google Assistant to have a natural conversation, it should be able to understand when it’s being spoken to and should be capable of responding to several requests during an interaction,” said Google in a blog post. This is another major step forward from Google in making a user interaction with the Google Assistant more natural. Continued Conversation will be available starting today on Google Home, Google Home Mini and Google Home Max, in India as well.
Few examples for the Continued Conversation are “Hey Google, what’s the weather today?”... “And what about tomorrow?”... “Can you add a rain jacket to my shopping list”... “And remind me to bring an umbrella tomorrow morning”...“Thank you!”
Google also announced a slew of other features coming to the Google Assistant this year, including the Google Duplex automated booking mechanism and more.
