Google Assistant seemed very confused in glitch that had it refusing to follow commands
Science fiction loves rebellious cyber intelligence — think HAL-9000 from2001: A Space Odysseyor, even scarier,the Terminator. While it’s not likeGoogle Assistantcould endanger astronauts or take over Skynet, its latest performance issue does come across a little like a low-key rebellion, with multiple reports from users of it responding to commands with “Sorry, I don’t understand.”
Droid Lifespottedthe issue on Wednesday, and there are plenty of corroboratingReddit threadswhere users describe giving standard Assistant commands to a variety of devices, including the Nest Hub and Samsung Galaxy phones, only to get the same confused response. After the “sorry” message, some devices follow up with a list of alternate commands to try — and frustratingly, the screen displaying those suggestions quotes the user’s (supposedly misunderstood) command up top, making it clear that Assistant was still able to hear perfectly well.
Assistant has experiencedsimilar glitchesin the past, including a “device not set up yet” error that Google eventually explained was the result of a “limited experiment.” As forthisproblem, Droid Life added an update Thursday that offers hope the glitch could be beginning to correct itself. A look at theGoogle Assistant support communitysuggests some users are finding workarounds.One postersaid his Assistant integration withSamsung SmartThingswould execute commands if he didn’t use certain words — for example, where “turn on hallway lights” once worked, now Assistant only responds correctly to “turn on hallway.”
We’re reaching out to Google to see if we can learn what’s going on here, and will update this post with any response.
UPDATE: 2022/02/17 15:57 EST BY STEVE HUFF
Google confirms fix
Google has gotten back to us and reports, “We are aware that there was an issue impacting Assistant-powered devices. It has been fixed and Assistant is working as it previously did.” Hopefully your devices are back to listening to you again.
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