Google's Voice Assistant in Action

Google put the spotlight on its artificial intelligence smarts at its annual developer's conference Tuesday, announcing new consumer features aimed at simplifying your life. Many of the updates have a practical bent, designed to ease tasks such as composing emails, making lists, navigating city streets and lessening the digital distractions that have increasingly addled people's lives as a result of previous tech industry innovations.

 One of the biggest crowd-pleasers for the thousands of software developers who gathered at the outdoor conference was an augmented reality feature on Google Maps that helps people get walking directions. Users will be able to follow arrows  or possibly a cartoon-like creature  that appear on a camera view showing the actual street in front of them

Some new features for Android phones also aim to improve people's digital well-being, including a new "shush" mode that automatically puts a phone in "do not disturb" mode if you flip it face down on a table. And a "wind down" mode will fade the screen to grey at a designated time to help you disconnect before bed. The company’s digital concierge, known only as the Google Assistant, is getting new voices  including one based on that of musician John Legend  later this year. It will also encourage kids to be polite by thanking them when they say please, similar to a feature Amazon is bringing to its Alexa voice assistant.

The assistant may also soon be talking with ordinary people at businesses for tasks such as restaurant reservations, although the feature is still in development. “Hi, I’m calling to book a hair appointment for a client,” said a realistic-sounding automated voice in a demo from the conference stage. The AI assistant deployed pauses and “ums” and “mmm-hmms” to sound more human in conversation with real people. Google said it will roll out the technology, called Duplex, as an experiment in coming weeks. “We really want to work hard to get this right,” said Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who kicked off the conference, known as Google I/O.