Better control of your smart devices with Google Assistant

[KiiFromGoogle]

Hi everyone, 

As smart home enthusiasts, we all have a special relationship with our Google Assistant. It’s part of our homes, and issuing a command is now second-nature. With that in mind, the Assistant team has worked hard to apply state of the art improvements in AI to how Assistant understands your commands to control your home. In the coming weeks, you may notice that there’s greater flexibility to ask your Google Assistant to control the devices in your home and get the outcomes you want. Examples of these improvements include:

Better device recognition by type:

For commands like “Turn the fan off” or “Kitchen lights on”, Assistant is now able to better match your request to the devices in your home based on their type and which room the device you’re talking to is in.

Better device recognition by name:

When your command doesn’t exactly match the name of your device, Assistant will now more reliably match to the expected device in your home for names that approximately or partially match your device name. For example, “Turn the lamp off” may match to a device in your home named “bedroom lamp”, and “Turn on the stair light” will better match a light named “stairs”.

Better targeting of actions and where they should occur:

Assistant is now better able to determine what specific action to take on your device and where that action should happen. For example, “Have the vacuum clean the kitchen, living room, and dining room” is now able to more accurately understand the specific areas of your home you are referring to.

These and other improvements in understanding are made possible by large scale neural networks that learn from examples to predict the most accurate action to take given a user's command. 

We Need Your Feedback

This new approach means that the way Assistant reacts to your commands to control your home devices may change from what you’re used to, and it’s even possible that some commands that worked in the past may no longer work. We understand it can be frustrating when a command you’ve been using to control your home no longer behaves the way you intend. After extensive testing, we’re slowly and carefully releasing these new changes to groups of users at different times, and want to monitor outcomes along the way so that we can refine our models appropriately. If you have feedback for us with examples of what is no longer working, we invite you to share this with us in the community’s Home Automation forum. 

We’re very excited about the transition to AI for the control of smart devices and the improvements to Assistant that it will enable in the future. Our team will continue working hard to ensure Assistant is able to understand you the way you naturally and most comfortably speak.

[PedroLiberal]

@KiiFromGoogle awesome news! If you are able to release these changes on a per user / home basis, then I volunteer as tribute!

also, if might be good for you to add some quotes here and there, because some functions depend on whether the vendor of the device has added them to their integration. I know that, for example, with my roborock vaccum I can’t tell it to vaccum a room, it will simply ignore my command. Queueing rooms would be great of course… assuming the vendor has worked on that functionality internally.

Other question! It is possible to have any feedback, information or status on the possibility of changing the wake word? I know the max support certain commands without the wake word. But that’s not what I’m asking. Alexa allows us to pick between different wake words, like “computer”. Is this option being worked on internally? Can we expect to have a similar option?

thank you!

[BasikBlack]

Really looking forward to this. I get the alerts now on my Pixel 6 pro asking if I meant for this speaker or that speaker to pick up my command so that it can adjust accordingly. However, still, I have the incorrect speakers talking to me all the time or trying to answer a question. 

[SquattingHen]

Please please please fix it where google will not control a lamp when I say light. We have had google and Alexa since day 1 (beta for alexa) and we have a lot of smart devices, plugs, switches fans/lights, contact and motion sensors, etc. 

In just about every room we have a wall switch for a light, fan, and a plug for a lamp. For example, the living room will have a living room fan, living room lamp, and a living room light (overhead light). When we ask google to turn on the living room light, the light and lamp is controlled, same when we want just the light off. This should not happen. I only asked for that specific device, but google is controlling all lights in the room. Alexa has always controlled these separately and I would like google todo the same. 
As it stands we are forced to use Alexa as it is more reliable and will control only the devices we ask. 

I get I could rename the devices, corner lamp, tall lamp, etc, but that just doesn’t fit or make sense for how we use it. 

I have also tried deleting rooms (and had them separate before rooms existed) but this issue has always been present with google. 

[Bethel1]

Two weeks ago, I had the ADT/Google supported alarm system installed. During these two weeks my system has only worked consistently for one day. I’ve had ADT technicians come out three times! I’ve been on the phone with the technicians as they directed me through Steps to fix the problem. I’ve been on the phone with a Google technician, who took me through more steps. He couldn’t help! I contacted ADT and told them that I want this system removed! But they say that I have to have had a technician come out at least three times before I can cancel.  What do you guys think; Should I give this system a chance or have it removed?  The problem I’m having is that my doorbell and inside google speakers keeps going out! When the technician comes in and supposedly repairs the situation, by Nightfall they have stop working again! Anyone else have these kind of issues with their system. Mine is a battery operated doorbell.

[Purplekero]

Are these improvements also being worked on Spanish google homes other languages have been very neglected and understand a lot less 

[SquattingHen]

Has this rolled out, because controlling our smart home devices through Google assistant still isn’t a great experience. We have to use Alexa to have things work right. 

jJust tried again and google still fails to control things correctly. 

Just please fix this:

We have a smart light switch in the living room that controls the light on the ceiling fan, called living room light. We also have a smart plug that a lamp is on called living room lamp. 

I can say, hey Google, turn on the lamp bong room lamp, and the lamp comes on, as it should. I can say, hey Google turn off the living room lamp and it turns off, as it should. But if I say, hey Google turn on the living room LIGHT, the name of the smart switch, Google turns on the living room light and the living room lamp, this is incorrect. I did not say LIGHTS, and I do not want these controlled together. They are separate devices, but google will not allow me to control them separately. Same when I try to turn off just the living room light, the lamp also turns off, I don’t want that, as I just asked specifically for the light. 

Again, Alexa handles this without an issue. 

[Luckybaba2022]

I have a few working on the project event that I have been thinking about for the last couple of weeks 

[vijaygopalsk]

Just trying to learn more about google.  Do we have any scope of working with Alexa in future, meaning if i play a song on Google and ask it to play on Alexa or Homepod is that skill currently available if not is there any work in progress to work with those devices in future?

[Skitter]

Can we get ride of "Hay (or) Ok" part of when we talk to Google ? ???  To me it would be nice if we just said Google instead of saying Hay (or) Ok Google when we're talking to her... All these other devices on the market & all they have to say is Sire or Alexa etc...!

[Dawn58]

Ever since you started the recent updates, I cannot get my email to work properly  and I cannot get the Google assistant when I say HEY GOOGLE  or OK GOOGLE.  Sometimes I can open my inbox,  but mostly not. I am not happy 

EMAIL most important thing to fix assistant is how I co.muni are with my doctors!

[111001010101111]

This is bad design, though. Why? You're focusing on doing something really hard, instead of something really easy, such as:

• rather than it saying, "I don't know, there's no rooms that match that", have to say, "I'm not sure what room you meant. Would you like me to list/show your room names?" then "What room would you like?" Right now it basically says, "sorry, no clue. You're on your own." It doesn't even offer to send us a link to our phone of the relevant support article for that feature!
• have it say, "I didn't get that, say again, what do you want to do? Leave out the room names and times", "I Understand, what room?", "What time?" etc. Right now unless you say it's secret codes perfectly, you have to say the same thing again. And it'll probably do the wrong thing when you do, so you have to say it 3 or 4 times, if it even works at all.
• having a list of voice commands and a list of things it can and can't do, for all features, available in text that we can read ON THE DEVICE, so we don't have to go to support documents (instant design fail) that most of your users won't use, so they end up not using 50% of the features, because the user interface sucks

Do you guys realise how bad the voice user interface is? It's terrible.

Your language recognition and word correction is GREAT. But because the interface around it is so bad, it's not very useful. It's like having a great engine, in a car that can't steer or break properly.

This is especially true on your Next Hub devices that don't have the US-only app drawer, so most of the features of the device are hidden to all your users in other countries.

While you're working on all the really hard stuff that will take years and loads of money to get right (ask Amazon about their Alexa scale backs), give us options to get the results we need now.

We're not your beta testers, we're your customers.

The amount of feedback I send, I should be paid as a QA tester. And if I was, your products would be significantly better.

I send so much I've even found technical issues with your send feedback process!

[DitaGalloxoxo]

New account today new Year lots of exciting things on my plate lots of hats to where lots to learn and lots too share excited ....google assistant has been fun just don't like having to say ok google I have a new galaxy 23 can't use a lot of my apps only find them I thought when I put voice command I could just say plainly how do I use apps can only get to permissions and open or force stop but then open but....no app also my screen shots All screen shots cannot access.....voice command no help any suggestions welcome.....thanks DitaGalloxoxo

[sjtryon]

I continue to wonder if anyone on the Google Home team actually uses their own products.

In addition to the Google Home experience being incredibly frustrating for many, many reasons, the support forums are full of non-helpful responses from Google or threads that they lock even when the recommended solution is not correct or hasn't been determined. 

We are all Google's beta testers - but apparently without a voice that makes any kind of difference. 

Personally, to solve the constant stream of issues, I'm getting close to the point of replacing everything-Google with Alexa-based alternatives. 

[Gitaus]

Good 

[111001010101111]

Remember, you can re-purpose your Google Home hardware devices with Home Assistant. Home Assistant are also working on creating new speakers that work as one would expect:

1. you say a command
2. without internet access or any badly designed AI nonsense, it follows your instructions. It doesn't second guess them, or 

Also be aware that Google's hardware is Thread and Matter compatible, so it can be used with lots of other things, which is where Home Assistant helps. 

And Google, under pressure from Bing AI and Chat GPT, will likely release Bard, their AI. I imagine they'll make it available on their Home products, since their current AI is a joke and if they don't, Microsoft, who are also working on a speaker using Bing AI, will out compete them.  They can't expect everyone to pay a fortune for Home devices with a Titan 2 chip in them, like the upcoming Pixel tablet. 

The Google hardware is decent. It's just the software that is bad, because Google has issues as a company. 

[8861696823]

My specks in kannad and Hindi English 

[شع]

انا

[Anonymous]

Right