Nick Fernandez / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google seems to be building a new AI-powered voice search mode for its Android app.
- The AI search should use follow-up questions to refine your query.
- Right now there’s still a lot of work to go, with key functionality still unimplemented.
One of the many ways we’re seeing AI systems continue to improve is in how gracefully they handle evolving context. After all, we don’t always go into these interactions with a fully formed task ready to present, and a hallmark of many of these evolving systems is their ability to continue to refine a task as they get more information from us. Right now, it looks like Google is developing some new functionality along this line for searches performed in its Android app.
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While doing one of our regular sweeps of the changes in Google’s latest Android app updates, we’ve been spotting some interesting strings, and in the new 15.43.36.28 beta build of the Google app it feels like a new feature is beginning to come together:
Code
<string name="googleapp_ai_mode_close_button_content_description">Close</string> <string name="googleapp_ai_mode_enter_button_content_description">Enter</string> <string name="googleapp_ai_mode_followup_hint">Ask a follow up…</string> <string name="googleapp_ai_mode_listening_text">Listening…</string> <string name="googleapp_ai_mode_mic_button_content_description">Microphone</string>This still very much looks like a work in progress, but when trying to access the pieces already in place we were able to get the app to start displaying an animated Assistant-style “listening” indicator in the search bar. While it doesn’t appear to be hooked up in a way that lets it actually access the mic just yet, the clear impression we get here is that Google is developing an AI-powered voice search that will invite users to refine their queries with follow-up questions in an effort to deliver the most useful results.
That’s a rough look at how this workflow could operate, making the best of the limited implementation available at this point in development. We also spot a number of new UI resources in the app package, with names that similarly seem to reflect Google’s intent to use them with this feature:
AssembleDebug / Android Authority
When it’s finally ready for prime time, it’s likely we’ll see this tool accessible through both the Google app directly, as well as the Google Search widget on your home screen. At least, that’s the sense we get from what’s working at the moment, but that could easily shift as Google progresses with its development here.
It’s possible we won’t have a full sense of the capabilities and limitations involved until we’re a little further down that path, anyway. For now we’ll keep an eye on future updates and see if we can’t spot any additional momentum in this direction.
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