I was a heavy voice user of the old Google Assistant, as well as Google Home/Nest speakers, and have really grown to hate its Gemini based replacement on my phone. So often it screws up with basic commands that were intuitive and reliable on the old Assistant. It’s also slower and feels like a waste of resources to query an LLM for simple device and smart home commands
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Turned it off and went back to assistant
It’s a terrible replacement for Assistant. It’s just the wrong tool for the job. Assistant was listening for commands and trying to turn those into actions. Gemini takes a second, misses the first half of the command, tries to figure out if I’m conversing or giving an instruction, and it’s hit or miss if it gets that right.
If I ask “what’s the weather today?” I have no idea if I’ll get a forecast, the definition of the word weather, or the song “what’s the weather like today” by the Kiboomers (which sounds like a cool indie band but in fact makes childrens early education songs).
Does anyone know an open source alternative for Android? Preferably something that works with home assistant.
Home assistant does have voice, and they’re trying out their own in home devices. It has an app for android and you can map your primary assistant to it
I have been fiddling with Home Assistant’s voice command solution. Because I have it running on raspberry pi, it is not fast enough to process commands efficiently, but I am probably going to move it to an old desktop I’ve been using as a home server and see if it runs faster.
Nabu Casa subscription would get you their voice processing which works well. I would trust them way, way ahead of Google for privacy even if it isn’t self-hosted for the voice processing.
They are also working on getting whisper working better locally, that’s a priority for them. The subscription is basically to support HA in general, because they work very hard at not enshittifying the Home Assistant environment.
That’s a good point. Can I still self host on my domain while also using their cloud for voice processing?
I’ve never used an assistant. Aside from the privacy issues, I’ve just always found them massively cringe unless they are being used for accessibility purposes. Sorry everyone in this thread, but when you guys talk to your phone or “smart home” stuff to complete basic 2 second tasks you look fucking stupid.
Do you know what’s really handy when your hands are full, say, while cooking or cleaning? Having a voice assistant to handle minor tasks such as setting timers, dropping in on the device downstairs to tell the kids who are out of earshot to come up for mealtime (yet somehow they can always hear you quietly opening the oreo box no matter where they are), check the front door to see who’s friend is knocking, etc, etc.
They have their place. It’s not for everyone.
I think you look stupid pulling out your phone to do something i can do with a couple words.
“Hey Mycroft, go to bed.” - Tv off, LR lights off, gate, door and motion sensors on, bathroom and bedroom lights on, furnace temperature turned down. Total cringe, huh.
K, that’s your opinion. I think it’s fun asking my assistant do things.
Well voice assistants are very handy in the car and great for safety. They also do save time around the house, to ask things like what’s the weather this weekend, set a timer for one hour, how many cups in a quart, play Radiohead on my TV speakers, what’s the humidity in my terrarium, how long will it take to get to work, turn off all the lights in the house, play the NPR update, etc. I am working to set up Home Assistant’s voice stuff to replace as much of this as I can but still tinkering with it.
And fortunately I don’t care if you think I look stupid! ;)
My brother used Google Home/Nest speakers with Google Assistant to automate his entire home. Everything from turning on lights, setting the heat/ac, turning on the TV, listening to music, controlling curtains and blinds etc. It was all based on voice commands. He also used it to make simple shopping lists.
Since it got turned into the LLM based one he’s been complaining non stop. It’s super slow and doesn’t understand what to do half of the time. Very simple voice commands will not be understood. Or it would understand perfectly, but instead of executing the command it would search on Google or something dumb like that.
The latest update has made it much much worse it seems, with the thing becoming even slower and basically unusable. The dream of a Star Trek like setup where you can talk to the computer is dead at the moment.
I wouldn’t know, I turn all “Assistants” off. I know they’re still there, but they don’t respond.
Nope. Never used it. No idea where it even is on my phone. Sounds like i made the right call.
I didn’t realize anything has changed. I have been disinclining to acquiesce to all Assistant data harvesting for over a decade now.
no voice assistant has ever worked reliably in my language so just don’t see the point
I love that it has to repeat my command back to me before executing it, like shut up and do it already
love that it has to repeat my command back to me before executing it
This is inserted to give enough time for the LLM to process your command. Otherwise Google would have to pony up for a lot more compute horsepower to make it performant.
That feature is especially sucky when you ask it to play a song to surprise your wife, and it goes, “playing your wedding song on YouTube…”
It’s like, dude, let the song be a surprise, stop stealing my thunder.
Then stop asking crappy assistants to pleasure your wife with surprise music. Just do it yourself next time.
I think there is a way to bring back Assistant on your phone, mine still has it.
You also don’t have to use whatever Google wants you to use. You can change the default assistant, though I don’t use any voice assistant so I don’t know what alternatives are out there, besides home assistant which is probably a bit much for most people.
I was trying to stick with the new one, but I just caved and put it back. I have started cussing at it when it responds incorrectly
I really liked it at first but it doesn’t do assistant things as well, for example playing music, so I switched back to the Google Assistant
the only use I’ve gotten has been finding where the “Accessibility settings” are (mono audio).
I liked the old assistant. I tried to use chatGPT as my assistant but it also had that slow LLM response time.
burns down forest to set alarm
It couldn’t perform simple commands that Google Assistant used to do, so I reverted. I liked the voice, but it’s really not an assistant yet.
Fuck Google.
I think it’s just fine now. It’s gotten a lot better since it first came out.
