Starting today, if you’re an English speaker in the U.S., you can choose between an Australian-accented voice and a British-accented voice for your Google Assistant across devices.
All of the features you use are still the same—like setting a timer, checking the weather and getting an overview of your commute—only now, your Assistant will speak with a new accent. Try asking “Hey Google, what’s the exchange rate from British pound to U.S. dollar?,” “Hey Google, what’s the capital of Australia?,” or “Hey Google, where can I get fish and chips nearby?”
These voices are built using DeepMind’s speech synthesis model WaveNet, which uses deep neural networks to generate raw audio waveforms—resulting in more realistic and natural-sounding voices for the Google Assistant.
To try out these new voices on your Assistant, navigate to “Settings” on your phone, tap on the “Assistant” tab, and select “Assistant voice.” You’ll now see two new voices that you can select, either “Sydney Harbour Blue” for the Australian voice, or “British Racing Green” for the British voice.
We hope you enjoy these new voices as much as we do. Cheers!
