When there is really understanding, words are not needed, but a glance is enough. And so to make the relationship with devices designed specifically for home use more and more familiar, Google is about to introduce a new way of interacting with its Assistant. No “Ok Google”, just turn to your smart display and start talking.
The feature, which will be exclusive to Nest Hub Max (a device that is not marketed in Italy), had already been discovered by a user who a year and a half ago had managed to intercept the experimental builds of the firmware intended for internal use. And today that embryonic functionality, called “Blue Steel” (with reference to the film Zoolander and the famous expression of the protagonist), seems to be taking shape.
WATCH AND TALK
As noted by 9to5Google, in fact, within the latest beta of the Google app, namely version 13.14, there is a precise description of the feature, whose name is “Watch and talk”. The explanation tells the user that you can look at the display from up to one and a half meters away to start talking directly with the Google Assistant. All this will take advantage of Voice Match and Face Match so that Nest Hub Max responds only to registered profiles, and not to anyone.
Obviously, for this option to work you need a camera: and at the moment Nest Hub Max is the only device in the family to be equipped with it. In the future, however, other products will probably be equipped with it, and therefore will be able to support this novelty.
As for privacy concerns, the data collected by the camera remains on the device, and therefore the video signal is not sent to the cloud. Currently, the Nest Hub Max camera is already being used to recognize hand gestures that allow you to pause and resume media playback, turn off timers and alarms, and silence the Google Assistant.
The feature, however, for now, has not been implemented, but the appearance in the code of such explicit text strings is the signal of a release that could be imminent, or even just the fact that Google is working on it seriously, and that the discovery of the user dating back to a year and a half ago will therefore have a sequel.