With the launch of Android Auto 11.4, Google is making its AI message summaries available to all users. Here’s how the feature works.
AI message summaries were announced by Google earlier this year to allow Google Assistant to quickly understand long messages without having to read the whole thing out loud. The feature then popped up in Android Auto’s settings, but the feature wasn’t actually live.
But, now, it looks like it’s finally widely available.
The first time you start Android Auto after installing v11.4, Google will send a notification to your phone saying that message summaries are now available. You don’t need to do anything with it, but it also offers a settings shortcut to manage the feature.
As detailed recently, AI message digests only work on long messages, with a 40-word threshold. For short messages, Google Assistant will still read the content out loud.
The first time you trigger an AI message summary, Google will alert you that it’s generating a summary and, with that in mind, the content May be be a little wrong. While that message is being read, a silent notification appears on your phone indicating that the summary is being prepared. When read aloud, our test message of over 100 words was summarized in about 15 words. In this process, much of the detail was refined, but the overall meaning was preserved. Your results may, of course, vary depending on the scenario.
When reading the AI ​​summary, there is virtually no difference in the on-screen responsive UI, which after the recent redesign takes up the entire display.
After reading the summary, a notification appears on Android Auto asking for feedback on the summary.
If you don’t want AI summaries, the feature can easily be turned off via the Android Auto settings on the car’s display or on your phone.
The feature is still called “AI Message Summaries” on the phone and in Android Auto’s on-car settings, but there’s also a new toggle for “Notifications with Assistant,” but it’s not exactly clear what that is at the moment. does. .
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