In the last week alone, we've seen Google Assistant introduce delightful new powers, but we've also seen a disaster for the service where it couldn't censor itself from using a racial slur. Now, we've just heard that a new Assistant related feature is coming to the Google Contacts app. You may have used the voice assistant to phone a contact or family member when you couldn’t touch your phone. If you use voice commands for calling frequently, you’ll be happy to see a new card in the Google Contacts app with everything Assistant knows about specific saved phone numbers.
Usually, you need to tell Google Assistant how you’re related to a contact the first time you use the relationship as an identifier. Assistant won’t know which contact is your girlfriend’s, for example, so it won't work if you just say, “call my girlfriend.” You need to add relations and additional info to the Contacts through Google Assistant.
Now, a new card for contact entries in the Google Contacts app contains everything Assistant identifies that contact with, including their date of birth, relationship with you, address, and name pronunciation. Essentially, the new card collects everything Assistant knows about your contact in one place.
Esper senior editor Mishaal Rahman notes the new card seems to be rolling out widely. So, if you update to the latest version of the Google Contacts app, you should see a pop-up saying Assistant info is now in Contacts. This handy feature helps you find and add Assistant information directly in the Contacts app, so you aren’t constantly shuffling between Assistant settings and your contacts.
Tapping the button to manage settings in this new card redirects you to the Your People page in the Assistant settings. You can add more contact associations to the list or create a family group tied to your Google account. This is a handy quality-of-life addition to the Contacts app. Hopefully, Google will add more functionality to this new card in due course.