ISSUE 62 • ANDROID ADVISOR 13GOOGLE I/O 2019see directions to the restaurant. Or, if you started a
podcast at home, you can resume right where you left
off from your car. If a call comes in, the Assistant will
tell you who’s calling and ask if you want to answer,
so you can pick up or decline with just your voice.”
Speaking of voice, the Assistant-powered ‘Duplex’
technology that uses AI to automatically book
reservations for you over the phone is coming to the
web as well. Duplex on the web isn’t just rehashing
Chrome’s saved-forms feature; it can intelligently
pull information from your Calendar events, Gmail,
and even your saved payment details to do all the
necessary paperwork for you. “Just ask the Assistant,
‘Book a car with National for my next trip’, and it will
figure out the rest,” the company says. Look for it to
arrive later this year.
Bottom line: Google Assistant knows what you did last
summer, and what you’re doing for dinner tomorrow,
and it wants to leverage that information to make
your life effortlessly easier. Apple’s WWDC developer
conference kicks off just about a month from now,
but it’s hard to envision how Siri will be able to match
the next-gen Google Assistant’s imposing arsenal of
context-aware features.