Google Assistant is no longer Google’s favorite child. With AI being the current buzzword, the company is instead focusing on Google Bard and its other efforts like Generative Search. This also means the virtual assistant is not receiving as frequent feature additions and updates as before. But Google has not entirely abandoned Assistant and has added two new voices.
Google Assistant’s new “Lime” and “Indigo” voices are available for US English, with the former being a male voice and the latter a female. They aim to “bring more diversity” to the voice options offered by the assistant.
All Assistant voices have been named after a color, and Google has continued that trend with its latest additions. The new Indigo and Lime voices are available on your phone, Google Home, and smart displays. You can hear the new voices in Google’s official announcement.
This is a server-side push from Google. So, if you use Assistant in US English, the two new voice options should already be live on your phone.
While Waze and Alexa keep adding new voices, Google has not been as active as them. The last major expansion came in May 2018 when Assistant gained six new voices. Google even added John Legend’s voice, but it was removed around two years later, in March 2020. Issa Rae was the second celebrity voice camera for Google Assistant. It was added in 2019 and removed in September 2021.
With these two new additions, you can now select from a total of 12 English US voices. For most other non-English languages though, Assistant only offers two or three options.
Changing Google Assistant’s voice is easy: navigate to Google Assistant settings on your phone or say the new “Hey Google, change your voice” command.