Google Assistant gets conversational: 'Hey' and 'OK' not needed for follow ups

It was promised at Google I/O this year that the Assistant Continued Conversation feature will be made available for US English speakers using Google Home Speaker , and the company has kept its promise. This means that now, you don’t have to call out Google Assistant by name every time you want to issue a command. In a blog post by Google on 21 June, the company has announced that the users will now have an option to enable the feature in their preferences and then saying “Hey Google” and “OK Google” for follow-ups will be a thing of the past. It doesn’t matter if you have multiple requests. [caption id=“attachment_4567941” align=“alignnone” width=“1280”] Google Assistant. Image: Google Blog[/caption] Once you ask Google Assistant if it is going to rain today, without having to start the conversation from scratch, you will also be able to remind yourself to carry an umbrella and protect your gadgets. All you have to do is to not leave the Google Assistant inactive for more than eight seconds. It will stay active if you speak within that time frame, believing that you’re still talking. It needs to hear some voice inputs. The LED’s on the Home Speaker will be kept lit as long as it’s listening to your voice. According to the blog post, “for the Google Assistant to have a natural conversation, it should be able to understand when it’s being spoken to and should be capable of responding to several requests during an interaction. We’re taking another step forward in making your interactions with the Google Assistant more natural with Continued Conversation.” We do not know if other languages will be enabled on Continued Conversation. Nevertheless, it will be a welcoming option for those who don’t exactly enjoy saying “Hey” and “OK” every time and are bound to start from scratch.