While Assistant within the U.S. has 11 different voices, Google users in different parts of the world only have one. Google Assistant on Android, Home, and Smart Displays now includes a second voice in nine different languages.
Assistant launched with a single voice referred to as “Holly” before gaining a male one in 2017. Last year, Google added six new views at I/O and rounded out the year with two more. Google also switched to a color-based naming scheme where Voice I turned Red, Voice II Orange, and so on.
This system was born out of Google, not wanting to apply any labels on voices. It truly makes for enjoyable, whimsical names like “Sydney Harbour Blue” and “British Racing Green.” Both are identifiable, whereas being actual colors. The last addition was in April with the John Legend “Cameo” voice that introduced the U.S. English complete to 11.
This week’s growth is concentrated on giving the remainder of the world their first various. Nine Assistant languages are gaining a new voice: English within the U.K., English in India, French, German, Japanese, Dutch, Norwegian, Korean, and Italian. After the rollout, “Red or “Orange” might be available, with Google randomly assigning a voice during set up.
Behind-the-scenes, all of at the moment’s additions had been built using DeepMind’s WaveNet speech synthesis model. Deep neural networks create raw audio waveforms which might be more realistic and natural with excellent pitch and pacing. Google took care to ensure Assistant understands the best way people in these countries discuss, accents, cultural references, and geographic markers. The objective is to create voices that sound like a natural speaker.
