Voice om Nest suddenly much more like a robot

[SU-user]

The pronunciation of Google Assistant on my Nest Mini suddenly changed two days ago for the worse.

It used to speak Swedish quite fluently but now it sounds like a robot, putting emphasis in the wrong place consistently.

It sounds very much like an 80s robot, really crappy!

Don't understand why the functions gets worse and worse instead of better!

Other things, like the list functions, lost 90 % of its functions when changing to Keep and I STILL have to tell it to add items to "New List" to make it add it to my shopping list.

• Yes, I have reported the above as feedback (the list stuff a yeat ago and several times) but I could just as well talk to empty space.

[SU-user]

And before anyone writes some useless reply about restarting and updating apps, I HAVE restarted everything, I HAVE the latest version of apps and I HAVE a super wifi network.

[AxelD]

Hi SU-user,

Thanks for reaching out to the Community. I'm sorry to hear that you're experiencing issues with Google Assistant because the voice has changed to a more robotic tone. I understand that this might be unsettling, and I appreciate you sharing your feedback. We'll check it out this issue and consider it for future updates.

Please let me know if you have any other questions.

Best regards,
Axel.

[Jayfrog214]

This has also happened to my Nest Pro. Up until a week or so ago my Google assistant sounded more "polished" now "she" sounds very I guess almost mechanical in her responses... Same voice but very impersonal and not as helpful sounding, if that makes any sense. "She" sounds more robot than assistant.

[AndreasRejbrand]

This has happened to me too.

My Google Nest devices have been speaking nice Swedish for years, but last month they started to sound like robots, not having any proper "sentence rhythm" but pronouncing each word separately. It sounds a bit like a parody on a computerised voice.

(Actually, there are way too many bugs in the Google Assistant/Home system. I have had the assistant (1) ask me repeatedly for the wake up time in an infinite loop, (2) set the alarm on the wrong day (24 hours later than expected), (3) refusing to turn on lights (but still being able to turn them off or changing their colours), (4) not recognising my lights when I speak Swedish, but strangely when I speak English, even though the assistant is configured for Swedish only. And (5) deleting reminders have never worked properly, but always produces very strange behaviour and responses. I have no idea if I am the only one experiencing these issues. Maybe Google isn't supporting the Google Assistant any more? It feels like it. Too bad, because I do love the idea and have bought many Nest speakers and displays.)

[moralesvicente]

Hello AndreasRejbrand, 

Thank you so much for posting in this community. I understand you're experiencing some difficulties with your Nest devices. No worries; I'm here to assist you. 

To provide you with accurate troubleshooting steps, I would appreciate your assistance in answering the following questions:

1. What type of Nest devices are experiencing the troubles? If you don’t know the models, check out this article: Google Nest devices.
2. What kind of lights do you have?
3. What model of mobile device are you using?
4. Have you performed any troubleshooting steps? If so, could you tell me which? 

In the meantime, you can try to change the voice of your Google Assistant and see if the same behavior happens with another voice assistant. 

• On your iPhone or iPad, open the Google Home app. Google Home.
• At the top right, tap your profile picture or initials, then Assistant settings, and then Assistant voice.
• Choose a voice.

For your reference, you can get more information in this article: Choose the voice of your Google Assistant. 

Keep me posted so I can provide you with further assistance.

Best regards, 

Daniel

[SU-user]

The advice about changing the voice does not work, I tried that. I have tried every possible setting in Home but the voice quality changed by itself from one day to another.

Either it's  a bug or Google decided to change to some new voice (cheaper?) voice platform.

It feels like Google always try to point to the user even for completely obvious bugs and poor quality.

I have the same experience as Andreas, quality is declining and I am very disappointed with the Nest and Google Assistant.

My friend has the same voice issue btw. We have Nest Minis, that have sounded okay until now.

[Maxxxxxxxxx]

I have the same issue. All of a sudden the Swedish voice is so bad and annoying to listen to. I really want this to be fixed, or I’m changing to apple. 

[SU-user]

Hello google, any replies to this? Any explanation?

[ByronP]

Hi Su-user,

Thank you for posting in the community. I understand how frustrating this must be with voice response on your Nest Mini. Thank you for sharing your experience with us.

We're always working to improve our products, and your feedback is invaluable so we can address it better in future updates.

Let me know if you have any further questions.

Regards,

Byron

[SU-user]

Yes, I have the same question as before, what happened, why is the voice so bad nowadays? Why can't you just switch back to how it was before? It's so bad it's difficult to understand.

[SU-user]

I have already given feedback via that link, on this and other problems (like that I have to add items to "New list" in Swedish for then to be added to the shopping list. If I say add to shopping list, it wants to create a new list, over a year old bug, also used to work before),  but it doesn't make any difference. 

[babtor]

Any updates regarding this? It has been broken for months at this point.

[babtor]

I have the same issue on my gen 2 Nest Hub, Swedish voice has been gradually becoming more and more robot like, to the point where it is hard to understand what it is saying.

[wickens]

Same issue with Swedish language, at least make it possible to change to the old voice in settings for google assistant..

[WebMaximus]

Same issue over here.

Not sure what you guys at Google did to decrease the quality of the Swedish voice like this but whatever you did, please undo it.

With the number of people reporting the same thing, it's quite evident the issue is on Google side.

[comand]

Same here and it just happen 

[Mist]

Yeah, sorry to whoever provided the voice samples but whether it was a person or AI it just ain't it. The pitch is now even more unstable in the speech and more robotic sounding than the previous update.

The worst part is that despite it sounding more unnatural than ever before it now triggers some kind of uncanny valley reaction that makes me unsettled and pissed of when asking it questions.

If you can't keep the old voices to choose from you can at least give us some kind of beep boop robot voice as a third choice.

[Lager]

Same with the Google nest hub gen 2, has worked flawlessly since buying it, up until yesterday. Now every word is "chopped" in to a sentence, with no natural rhythm.

[Cheese7856]

It happend to me the same day. I have norwegian voice, but now it sounds more robotic. It sounds less robotic when I turn on a male voice, so I think I am going to keep the male voice turned on until it's fixed.

[Fredrikstal]

Same issue here. Swedish voice suddenly is much worse than before. We have one Google Home and three Nest Minis in the house. Had them for several years now. My kids have Nest Minis in their rooms and are now complaining about the annoying voice.

[Confetticat]

I can no longer understand what my assistant is saying!! 😖

[WebMaximus]

Anyone from Google in here who could comment on what happened and why and if we're stuck with this or if there's an update around the corner to look forward to?

[MrMorpheus]

Have the same problem with the voice sounds like a crappy robotic toy. 

And the last week or so the voice seems to stutter been cut of 

[Tony_F]

Same happened to me in Britain. On both nest mini and server voice is deeper but for the first couple of days it switched from the original male voice to another 

[Jabs66]

I own 3 Google home mini, I want to switch to another platform since Google has made them useless with the new so called voices. Nowadays it always has difficulties understanding what im saying and starts playing music from "open Spotify", all i wanted it to do is turning on a lamp, guess its back to doing it myself. It´s weird that Google doesnt tell us why they choose to ruin everything with theese bad voices. I want Google to repay me and take this junk back.

[SU-user]

It also nowadays keeps mixing English and Swedish in the same sentence, very odd.

[StenR]

Yes, ny Google Nest Hub voice deteriorated as you say, but the Mini is still as before.

[Jabs66]

I have both versions of "Google Home mini" gen 1 and gen 2, both has the new voice problems that render them useless, the only thing they truly are capable of nowadays is as bookends, and maybe hockey pucks.