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Google Assistant gets its long-promised John Legend voice

Just so long as you aren't too picky about the questions he'll answer.

It took the better part of a year to show up, but John Legend's Google Assistant cameo is finally available in the US. Ask the AI helper to "talk like a Legend" and the singer's dulcet tones will greet you when issuing certain commands, such as asking about the weather. Naturally, he'll have answers for questions about his own life, such as his wife Chrissy Teigen or his favorite type of music (take a wild guess). Some of those answers will be canned, but others will take advantage of WaveNet speech synthesis to deliver a customized response.

Legend will only be available for a "limited time," and you'll have to be ready to hear the regular Google Assistant voice for those many queries where the crooner isn't available. It still beats hearing the same old dialogue for everything, though, and hints at a future where there's considerably more variety in voice assistants.