"Ok Google, are you a machine?" I'm often told that I have personality, but the human being is you. " How far away they seem from robot voices ... Today, vocal assistants are imitating human intonations better and better. A voluntary mimicry. "It's inevitable, from the moment we interact with an entity that responds to us, whether orally or in writing, as a human, we will project a personality," says Lauren Ducrey , person in charge of the French personality of the Google Assistant, that Europe 1 met.
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French self-mockery
This Franco-American is part of the Google team, based in New York, whose job is to adapt the Google Assistant for French-speaking users. A task that mixes translation and creation of a suitable language. "It's not the word translation that interests us but the return of emotion," says Lauren Ducrey. "For example, if you say 'goodbye' to the wizard, in France, he will sometimes answer you 'Ciao l'maggot', while in the United States, it's 'See you later alligator'. is not the same but the emotion, the note of humor, remains. "
A writing challenge that is the same for all voice assistants. But all have their particularities: that of Google will not have the same jokes or the same expressions as that of Apple or Amazon. In addition, there are subtle variations from one country to another. "The American assistant, he is emphatic and very emphatic.The French assistant is also empathetic, but it will be a little more in self-deprecation and irony, to stick to the peculiarities of the French," says Lauren Ducrey.
Create a connivance, but not more
The whole issue of the personality of the voice assistant is to convince us humans to converse with an invisible artificial intelligence. "The recipe is to have a helpful, cheerful, familiar and empathic personality," says Lauren Ducrey. "The assistant needs to be sufficiently conversant so that we want to talk to him because we know that he will answer us intelligently, that he will understand for example the context of a question about Christmas or Valentine's Day, we must create a connivance. "
" The assistant must speak on the tone of the conversation without pretending to be human "However, if the voice assistants must be able to give the exchange for a short conversation, there is a line to red not to cross. "The idea is that he has to speak on the tone of the conversation without pretending to be human, and when you say 'you get on my nerves', one of the possible answers is' it breaks me code to hear that. "The assistant shows that he can understand the expression of feelings without pretending to have feelings as a human since there is this reference to the code," illustrates Lauren Ducrey.
An assistant, not a scholar
"We have been very careful to ensure that we do not succeed in replacing relationships with other humans," she says. A critical focus even though voice assistants can be easily used by children. "The assistant is not designed to capture the attention of users, conversations are designed to be very short." The assistant must remain a simple support, a way to save time to obtain information, such as weather, cinema sessions or to launch the radio (Europe 1 of course!).
The assistant is not omniscient. "It is not intended to answer questions that the search engine will provide better answers," says Lauren Ducrey. In the same vein, do not try to talk politics or religion to your voice assistant. Because in these areas, he perfectly masters the language of wood.
Meet Europe 1 at Voice Tech Paris 2019
Europe 1 is a partner of Voice Tech, the first professional event dedicated to vocal technologies, which is being held in Paris on November 26th and 27th at the Salons de l'Aveyron (12th district). For the first time in France, Voice Tech Paris will bring together the entire vocal ecosystem - experts, exhibitors, speakers - to accelerate the conversational transition of companies and promote the emergence of a French voice economy. Europe 1 will speak on November 26th during a workshop. Register and meet us!