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Brad Abrams on Google Assistant

Published: Jan. 12, 2017, 12:15 p.m.

The O’Reilly Bots Podcast: A universal bot for messaging, mobile voice, and the home.

In this episode of the O’Reilly Bots Podcast, Pete Skomoroch and I speak with Brad Abrams, group product manager of Google Assistant, the company’s new AI-driven bot that lives in many different contexts, including the Pixel phone, the Allo messaging app, and the Google Home voice-controlled speaker.

Discussion points:

  • “Actions,” Google’s API for Assistant plug-ins. These are available for Google Home now, and will be rolled out for other instances of Assistant later.
  • The relationship between Assistant and Google’s Pixel phone.
  • Google’s plans for the recently acquired API.ai, and where it fits in with Assistant.
  • Google’s WaveNet technology, a text-to-voice engine that uses neural networks.
  • Google’s voice user interface design guidelines, and how Google uses different voices in different settings.