Google will soon be adding to the smart home and, among other things, launch a successor to the Nest Wifi. In addition, at least one new smart display is expected, whereby owners of a current Nest Hub Max can also look forward to an update very soon: Through a combination of several sensors, the “Hey Google” will soon be able to be omitted.
The winged words “Hey Google” are likely to be proclaimed several million times a day around the world to address the Google Assistant and ask it questions or give it tasks. On the Nest Hub Max Smart Displays you could save yourself this soon because they should get a new feature codenamed “Blue steel”. This makes it possible to address the Google Assistant in the Smart Display without prior salutation.
Blue steel instead of “Hey Google”
For Bleaksteel, which does not yet have an official name, it should be sufficient to simply look at the smart display and then recite the corresponding command. This is made possible by the front camera and the integrated face recognition, which is intended to recognize the user’s gaze and activate speech recognition in the following seconds. Both the face and the voice are to be verified so that only authorized users can use the Smart Display.
By the way, facial recognition should take place completely locally on the device, so that no one has to be afraid of constant surveillance. You just have to believe that. The new feature has so far only been discovered by a teardown in the beta version, so a few weeks should pass until the official rollout.