Google Assistant offers second voice option in nine countries

Unfortunately, it isn't available here yet. But it'll be coming to nine other countries for the first time. The US is the first country to get a second option. Now there are new voices available for Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Norwegian in their respective countries. India and the UK get new English voices. When a user sets up a new Android phone, the default voice will be chosen at random. But users do have the option to change that later.

The voices are built with DeepMind's WaveNet technology to help make these sound natural. Instead of making the traditional female-sounding voice the default, Google is moving away from assigning genders to the system. Alternatively, the new voices will be referred to by colours. One is called red, and another is called orange. And the order they will be presented in is randomized. Google started this last year in the US with Google Nest and Home devices. 

Source: The Verge + Engadget