Update 1 (09/29/2020 @ 1:26 PM ET): The new, faster Google Assistant now works in German, French, Spanish, and Italian. Scroll to the bottom for more information. The article as published on August 3, 2020, is preserved below.
Today, Google lifted the veil on the Pixel 4a, the company's second-ever mid-range Pixel smartphone. They also surprisingly teased the Pixel 4a 5G and the Pixel 5 for a fall launch. But new hardware isn't all that Google announced today. The company also announced software updates to two of its nifty AI-powered features: Live Caption and the new Google Assistant. The former can now work over voice and video calls while the latter will soon work in 4 new European languages: German, French, Spanish, and Italian.
Back at Google I/O 2019, Google demonstrated a much faster version of its Google Assistant service. According to Google, the "new Google Assistant" processes speech at nearly zero latency, offers nearly real-time transcriptions, and works without a network connection. They accomplished this by trimming down 100GB of speech recognition and language understanding machine learning models to less than 0.5GB in size. The new Google Assistant experience also supports Continued Conversations and integrates with other Google apps on your device.
At launch, the new Google Assistant was only available on the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL in U.S. English and with personal Google accounts. However, Google has since expanded support to G Suite accounts, new English locales including Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and Singapore, and the first foreign language: Japanese. With the Pixel 4a launch, however, Google announced that the new Google Assistant will be available in the aforementioned 4 European languages.
Introduced last year, the new Google Assistant is also available on Pixel 4a to help with multitasking across apps and getting things done quickly, like finding a photo or sending a text. You can now try out the new experience in German, French, Spanish and Italian, in addition to English, with more languages coming soon.
Google's support page has been updated to reflect today's announcement, with the notice that support for these 4 languages "will be available soon." We'll let you know when these new languages are added. Meanwhile, check out our Pixel 4a coverage to learn more about Google's latest device.
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Update 1: German, French, Spanish, and Italian support added
At the launch of the Pixel 4a last month, Google announced that its cleaner and faster Assistant will support 4 new European languages, including German, French, Spanish, and Italian. As reported by AndroidPolice, you can now go to Assistant's language settings and change the language to one of these 4 languages. However, AndroidPolice notes that the experience is a bit limited right now. While it's indeed faster than before thanks to on-device machine learning, it doesn't support continuous conversations, doesn't integrate with Google Chrome, and doesn't seem to work with some of the other in-app experiences such as Google Photos, YouTube, and Gmail.
New Google Assistant in French, Italian, German, and Spanish. Screenshot credits: Rita El Khoury for AndroidPolice.
As of now, the new Assistant is still only available for the Pixel 4, Pixel 4 XL, and Pixel 4a, but the upcoming Pixel 4a 5G and Pixel 5 will almost certainly support it.