Who would have thought, that a ‘Hey Siri’ shortcut on Apple’s famed voice assistant could also help you get to Google’s own, not-as-good-as-Siri assistant. Well, peeps at the search giant thought of it as a way to get more heads rolling towards its own assistant (since it clearly hasn’t been a match to Siri otherwise in the iOS universe), and hence a new update lets you summon it via Siri by making use of the in-built Siri shortcuts.
With Siri so deeply embedded within iOS, it is virtually impossible for a third-party virtual assistants — even so it comes from folks like Google — to compete with what Siri provides. Nevertheless, Google isn’t the one to back and is hence using Siri’s own advanced features, to the advantage of its beleaguered Google Assistant
As it pretty much implies from the name, Siri Shortcuts let you assign short voice phrases as shortcuts to whatever you wish to do post the customary ‘Hey Siri’ phrase. You can create these phases to virtually create shortcuts for almost any app (all the apps in case they are developed by Apple). And with Google Assistant now using this ability with an update, a phrase like ‘Ok (or Hey) Google’ can be assigned as a shortcut to summon up the search giant’s assistant.
If your iPhone is unlocked, you can even access it hands-free by saying “Hey Siri” and then “OK Google” (if that’s the phrase you pick). However it isn’t really a smooth sail. After updating the Assistant app on iOS, you need to open the app to set up a new Siri Shortcut for Google Assistant.
To start exploiting this and have some fun, you can download the latest Assistant for iOS right here.
