Google’s quest for smarter phones

GOOGLE has put the spotlight on its artificial intelligence smarts at its annual developers conference, announcing new consumer features imbued with machine learning.

Many of the updates have a practical bent, designed to ease tasks such as composing emails, making lists, navigating city streets and lessening the digital distractions that have increasingly addled people’s lives as a result of previous tech industry innovations.

One of the biggest crowdpleasers for the thousands of software developers who gathered at the outdoor conference was an augmented reality feature on Google Maps that helps people get walking directions.

Users will be able to follow arrows — or possibly a cartoon-like creature — that appear on a camera view showing the actual street in front of them. Some new features for Android phones also aim to improve people’s digital wellbeing, including a new “shush” mode that automatically turns on the Do Not Disturb function if someone flips their phone face down on a table. And Wind Down Mode will fade the screen to greyscale at a designated bedtime.

The company’s digital concierge, known only as the Google Assistant, is getting new voices — including one based on that of musician John Legend — later this year.

It will also encourage kids to be polite by thanking them when they say please, similar to a feature Amazon is bringing to its Alexa voice assistant. The assistant may also soon be talking with ordinary people at businesses for tasks such as restaurant reservations, although the feature is still in development.

The company said it will roll out the technology, called Google Duplex, as an experiment in coming weeks.

“We really want to work hard to get this right,” said Google CEO Sundar Pichai.