Google assistant's biggest question: 'What's my personality?'

One of the first things Genevieve Bell did after bringing home an Amazon Echo was ask the smart speaker to set a timer. After the Echo replied in its soft, reassuring female voice, Bell told the device "thank you." "When was the last time you said'thank you' to Google search?" asked Bell, Intel's longtime cultural anthropologist and corporate strategist. Bell's experience points to both the promise and the peril of Google's new effort to create its own digital butler, simply dubbed "Google assistant," which it hopes will become capable of natural, two-way conversation with people. Several experts in conversational software said Google could make itself an even more intimate part of users' lives by offering this kind of technology.