Brady Snyder / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google is testing new input features to complement Google Home’s Gemini-powered features.
- We’ve spotted a new option to add media within Ask Home, a conversational interface to control your smart home or get a gist of the video feeds.
- Google is also testing new shortcuts to redo or reset chats.
Google Home received a big update past October, and one of the highlight features was Ask Home. This introduces a conversational interface across many areas of the upgraded Google Home app, allowing you to ask Gemini questions about events recorded by your security cameras, design automation routines, or instruct it in natural language, rather than being forced to follow a specific command syntax. In the near future, Ask Home could also allow more inputs, as we’ve spotted recently.
While Ask Home currently only allows text-based queries, we’re now seeing a new option to enhance queries being tested. This new option allows users to add images or videos to supplement their questions.
With this test, a plus button appears to the left of the text input box. When you tap the button, it opens the option to attach images through the camera or the gallery.
While we were able to attach media, we couldn’t get Ask Home to use it as part of the input. So, we’re unsure of its exact applications. However, one of the functions we presume the feature will offer is to analyze specific shots from your security cameras or doorbells, though you could argue that the same can be done using Gemini.
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In addition to the added input feature, Google is also testing buttons to Redo or Reset chat. These work as expected; the Redo function regenerates Ask Home’s responses if you’re not satisfied, while Reset Chat lets you cleanse the chat of any previous context so you can ask about other events. The latter works somewhat like a New Chat button in AI chatbots, given that the functionality is not available in Ask Home yet.
We discovered these features in version 4.9.51.0 of the Google Home app on Android, though these features are not widely out for users. We will continue probing and will inform you when we know more about how it works.
⚠️ An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
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