The Californian company detailed its various tricks a few days ago so that Google Assistant can understand the context of a sentence.
Google has invested a lot of resources in its speech recognition technologies and continues to make great progress in the field.
The problem of the second question and the context of a conversation
If the analysis of simple sentences of the type ” Turn on the light bulb in the living room ” Where ” What weather is it ? isn’t really a problem for Google Assistant anymore, holding a more complex conversation is still a problem.
The software must understand the context of a sentence to be able to follow more than one command at a time. Suppose you ask the question: What is the weather in Paris? », then after the answer given by the voice assistant you ask « How many people live there? Google Assistant should be able to know that the subject of your second question is still Paris, without having to ask you.
Google has therefore, a few days after its Google I/O 2022, detailed its progress in this area in more detail on its blog dedicated to artificial intelligence.
Google Assistant rephrases sentences using machine learning
The trick used by the brand’s engineers with the “Continuous Conversation” feature seems obvious, but took years of work to achieve. Google Assistant will simply work to rephrase the second question by taking the subject of the first question. If the sentence works, he can answer it. Otherwise, it will end the conversation.
Google gives as an example the main query “ Who is Superman’s wife? (spoiler: it’s Lois Lane), then a second question ” When did they get married? “.
To recognize the subject of this sentence, Google Assistant will analyze the initial query and break down the different terms. Artificial intelligence also steps in to identify popular terms, based on the number of searches performed on Google or the popularity of topics and rank secondary queries based on relevance to remove false positives and errors.
Machine learning, trained on a large number of example sentences, will finally generate relevant secondary questions in order to find the right reformulation and give the right answer. In our example, Google Assistant will understand the question “ When did Lois Lane and Superman get married? “.
If “Continuous conversation” is already at work in Google Assistant, these systems continue to improve as users use them on their smartphones and the search engine intends to eventually arrive at a conversation. fluid between man and machine.
The Google Assistant is arguably the most popular AI-powered virtual assistant program on mobile. Launched in May 2016 (to replace its predecessor Google Now), it has established itself on the market thanks to its new functionality, allowing you to interact with your interlocutor.
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Source : Android Police
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