Enlarge / The lettering "Hey Google" on the Google pavillon at the CES consumer electronics show in Las Vegas in 2018. These words activate Google Assistant, Google's virtual personal assistant. (credit: Andrej Sokolow/picture alliance)
Voice assistant hotwords are nice when you need them and annoying when they go off accidentally. For Google, maybe a valuable signal for disabling a hotword is when you have a meeting scheduled?
Google is launching a new feature for Google Meet Hardware that will disable the "Hey, Google" hotword during a meeting and 10 minutes before. Google says, "We've heard from our customers that due to the increase in teams transitioning to hybrid meetings, the "Hey, Google" control can unintentionally be triggered during meetings. We hope this improvement helps reduce any accidental disruptions during your calls."
Google isn't yet smart enough to disable "Hey, Google commands across all your devices, just "Google Meet Hardware." These are custom Internet appliances specifically built to do room-scale Google Meet video calls and combine speakers, microphones, cameras, and smart displays. They're primarily geared for corporate meeting rooms where one device connects the whole table to a video chat.
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