Google adds voice command to silence Assistant

Google Assistant is a very intelligent personal assistant, and sometimes a little too much. When you ask Google a question, it may give you an answer that’s a little too long for your liking, but now you can silence it.

Google Assistant can answer all kinds of questions with short answers, but some sometimes need to be more complex and detailed. It happens then that your assistant launches into a long explanation to answer your question. For those who don’t have time or just don’t want to hear the full answer, Google now lets you silence your Assistant before it’s finished speaking.

Previously, if you wanted Google Assistant to stop, you first had to say a wake word to it like “Ok Google” or “Hey Google”. However, thanks to a new update, it is now possible to silence him by simply saying “Stop ». Google Assistant therefore aligns itself with the capabilities of Siri, who was already able to interrupt his speech if he hears the word “Stop”. For its part, Amazon is always behind with Alexa, which does not yet offer a similar feature.

Also read: Google denies spying charges via Google Assistant, no data is kept

Google wants to make its Assistant more human

The arrival of this new feature is not really a surprise. This feature was first introduced by the company at its annual Google I/O event in 2019. It joins the long list of commands called “quick expressions”, which do not require saying “Ok Google”. Among the commands currently compatible with the option, we find in particular “Cancel the alarm”, “What time is it?”, “What is the weather?”, “Put the music on pause”, or “create a reminder”.

For the moment, the word “Stop” does not work only on screens and smart speakers from the American manufacturer. Having tried on my different speakers, I noticed that these were not currently compatible, but they should receive within the next few days an update with the new functionality. If you’ve ever found yourself listening to a long Google Assistant monologue, you’d absolutely love being able to silence it faster. It is not yet known when it will be deployed on smartphones.