Google blog:
We’ve heard from a lot of people that adding “Hey Google” before each follow-up question for the Assistant doesn’t feel as natural as they’d like. We announced Continued Conversation at I/O as an optional setting which lets you have a natural back-and-forth conversation with the Assistant without repeating “Hey Google” for each follow-up request. The new feature is starting to roll out today, and you can turn it on in the Google Assistant app by going to Settings → Preferences → Continued Conversation and hitting the toggle.
Basically, Google assistant will keep listening (for about 8 seconds) after the end of a “Hey Google” back and forth. No need for a follow-up “Hey Google”.
Wondering if Siri will follow this approach, or perhaps develop a more complex protocol for handling continued conversation.
Nice. This is more natural and I’d love to see Siri use it or some other method to allow followups. Siri et al also need to get better at remembering context – if I ask for coffee shops near me and get a list, I’d like to be able to then ask “How about lunch spots?” and have her infer that I still mean “.. near me.”
“We’ve heard from a lot of people that we’re far too demographically cloistered to remember how most other people speak naturally.”
Well, Siri on the Apple Watch removed the whole “hey Siri” trigger phrase. Which I would argue is even better than getting rid of it for follow up dialogue only.