Google Assistant is receiving a new feature for users in the United States which allows them to choose an accented voice for their Assistant. The options include British and Australian accents. As you'd expect, the new voices can do all the same things you could with the regular English voice - setting timers, checking the weather, and more - but now you can hear it with a distinct accent.
While the addition of new languages may make the assistant more useful for customers, there's not much of a practical use for the new voices. With that being said, you might like the addition if you have a fascination with foreign accents.
The new voices are powered by artificial intelligence and deep neural networks developed by Google's DeepMind. The company used its WaveNet speech synthesis model announced back in 2016, which should provide realistic and natural-sounding voices.
To enable the new voices, you can head to the Assistant's settings and choose either “Sydney Harbour Blue” or “British Racing Green”. It's currently unclear if these options will roll out to users in other English-speaking countries as well.
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