Google launches Google Assistant to take on Siri and Alexa

Look out SIRI. Step aside Alexa, Google has its own voice-based digital assistant: Google Assistant.

While it lacks a proper or even pretty name, this could be the mother of all voice-activated assistants. 

"Our ability to do conversational understanding is far ahead of what other assistants can do," said Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who announced the new assistant from the Google I/O 2016 developers conference keynote stage on Wednesday. He noted that 20% of all Google searches are accomplished via voice.

Pichai demonstrated Google Assistant's prowess by asking it first about "Who directed The Revenant?" Google Assistant correctly answered with "Alejandro G. Iñárritu," but then Pichai showed how he could continue the conversation without repeating the director's name.

The company also introduced Google Home, a hardware device that will work with Google Assistant and ship later his year.

With Home, Google Assistant will respond to anyone who says, "OK, Google." It will let users manage and access schedules, find out about traffic, track packages, and ask Google Assistant general interest questions.

You can sign up for more details about Home at http://home.google.com/

During the keynote, Google executives noted that there will be a Google Assistant ecosystem, which means it will appear in the aforementioned hardware, on smartphones and in apps, like the new Google messaging app, Allo. Google Assistant will actually work during conversations and automatically try to help with, for instance, dinner reservations the group is discussing. It will also bring in outside, relevant information like restaurant cards, (the kind you normally see in Google Now and Google search results), and then guide users through setting number of diners, time to dine and making reservations with Open Table.

Google Allo with Google Assistant

IMAGE: GOOGLE