You have a lot of ways to activate your Google Assistant, but the most popular one involves saying "Hey Google" to trigger it before speaking your command. The Mountain View giant has been actively researching ways to make it easier for users to activate their Assistant, and the next innovation may be a surprisingly ingenious one. Google's Nest Hub Max devices could soon be gaining a Look and Talk feature to activate your Assistant by just looking at the device.

The folks at 9to5Google have combed through the latest Google app beta (13.14). They have found evidence of this new feature, codenamed "Blue Steel" (in a possible reference to the film Zoolander) for the Nest Hub Max (being the only Google-made smart speaker with a camera), detailing in full how it might work once it's released. As per internal strings, your Nest Hub Max could utilize its front-facing camera to detect if you need its help (by checking if you're looking at it) and start listening for a command.

How it works: Your device relies on camera sensing and analyzes your video to determine if you want to activate your Assistant. Assistant may activate when you didn’t intend it to, if it incorrectly detects you want its help. Your video is processed on-device and isn’t sent to Google servers.

Detection and processing will occur on-device and won't be sent to Google's servers, so rest assured — Google will not have access to a 24/7 live stream of your house. The feature will also utilize Face Match and Voice Match to ensure it's actually you trying to trigger it, so it doesn't activate by anyone else looking at the device.

As this feature has just been spotted in the Google app beta, we don't know when this update will debut. Google could choose to officially unveil it during I/O 2022, which is from May 11-12th. Of course, there's also the chance the feature will be scrapped altogether — only time will tell.