Google home assistant can recognise six people, but not when they talk at the same time

Google’s voice-activated assistant can now recognise who’s talking to it on Google’s Home speaker.

An update released Thursday enables Home’s built-in assistant to learn the different voices of up to six people, although they can’t all be talking to the internet-connected speaker at the same time.

Distinguishing voices will allow Home to be more personal in some of its responses, depending on who triggers the assistant with the phrase, “OK Google” or “Hey Google.”

For instance, once Home is trained to recognise a user named Joe, the assistant will automatically be able to tell him what traffic is like on his commute, list events on his daily calendar or even play his favourite songs. Then another user named Jane could get similar information from Home, but customised for her.

The ability to distinguish voices may help Home siphon sales from Amazon.com’s Echo, a competing product that features its own voice-activated assistant, Alexa. The Echo doesn’t yet recognise different voices, so Alexa can’t retrieve more personal information for different accounts.