Google Assistant can provide personalized news feed in the US

Google has given its voice assistant Assistant a new feature that allows users to request a spoken news feed. For now, this feature only works in the US and in English, and works based on preferences and data of the individual user.

This so-called Your News Update works by asking in English to ‘play’ the news. Then comes a mix of short news stories, where the choice is based on the user’s interests, location, user history and preferences. Then the bigger news stories follow.

Your News Update replaces the current way of receiving news updates, which requires a choice from a list of news media, where users are presented with news updates from those media in a chosen order. This is not topic specific or based on the person’s preferences and data, unlike the new feature.

For now, the feature only works in the US and in English. Google has collaborated with about fifty media, websites, and organizations, mainly American organizations. According to Google, the new function will also be expanded to other countries from next year, but when that will be the case and which countries it concerns is unknown.