No more rudely yelling at your Google Home smart speaker, kids. Google today announced at its I/O developer conference a new Google Assistant setting for families called “Pretty Please.” The feature will teach children to use polite language when interacting with the Google Assistant, and will receive thanks from the virtual assistant in response.
For example, when children say “please,” the Assistant will respond with some sort of positive reinforcement while performing the requested task.
During a brief demo, the Assistant was shown interacting with kids, and saying things like “thanks for saying please,” “thanks for asking so nicely, or “you’re very polite.”
The feature arrives at a time when parents were growing concerned that kids were learning to treat the virtual assistants in smart speakers rudely, which would translate into their interactions with people.
Amazon recently addressed this problem with an Alexa update called Magic Word, which is just now rolling out.
Google says its Pretty Please feature will launch later this year.
