Just How Good is Jelly Bean's New Voice Activated Search 'Assistant'?

[Babyfacemagee]

During Google's I/O conference last week where the Nexus 7 and Android 4.1 were both introduced, we got a brief look at the new voice activated search 'assistant' in Jelly Bean which many have compared to Apple's 'Siri'.  While I was impressed during the demo at the conference the above video by Android Community's Cory Gunther really blew me away.   

There's no doubt that Google's 'Assistant' sounds much more human than Apple's 'Siri' and the ability to understand relatively rapid speech with little or no errors is also impressive.   Now obviously this is a technology that is continuing to evolve rapidly and as Google improves the technology we can expect more and more Artificial Intelligence features to make its way into the new 'Assistant'...which since I can't find any other name given to her I've chosen to name 'Gabby'.     What do you think? Is gonna be a fun feature to play around with or what?  Seems to blow 'Siri' out of the water, no?

Note: (While Cory calls this 'Google Now' in the video, that is actually a different feature that I will go into in a future article. This video is the voice actuated search 'assistant')

Source: androidcommunity

[Drew]

Wow, that is crazy futuristic!  Really look forward to using it.

Is this the same program they were naming 'Majel', after Gene Roddenberry's wife?  I might be thinking of something else.

[Babyfacemagee]

Yes, I think 'Majel' was the name they used when it was in development...and yes, named after Gene 'Star Trek' Roddenberry's wife, Majel Barrett-Roddenberry.   But they just called it 'assistant' at the google I/O.

[The Nexus Project]

Been using it on my GNex its lovely

[dshizzel]

I'd just noticed on my recently updated (ICS)  Google maps that the 'Majel' voice is being used for navigation and it sounds great!  I dumped my UK Victoria voice.  Some things still use a more plain synthetic voice, but the Google Navigation is definitely using the same voice heard in the video.

[Drew]

I wonder if you can choose what type of voice the Assistant has?  It sounds like hers is fine, but some people may want variety.

[nexus 7]

Mine has a male voice.

[birdastrompgman]

That demo was very impressive.  I just tried the voice assistant, and it really works well.  It was flawless on the simple questions, like the ones in the demo.  It hit the hard questions, too, answering them with web links that were accurate.

I've dictated an email, and it saved a lot of typing, but once it fills its buffer, it loses a lot of data.