Google's new Assistant speaks a second language: Japanese

When Google launched its new Assistant for the Pixel 4, the voice AI could only speak and understand one language: English. The tech giant rolled out support for other English variants (UK, Canada, Ireland, Singapore and Australia) in December, but it's only now that the company is giving it the ability to speak and understand another language entirely. Google has announced that the new Assistant now supports Japanese for Pixel 4 devices. It made the revelation in the same post notifying users that Motion Sense, which makes it possible to control the phone without touching it, is also finally out in Japan.

According to Android Police, to use Assistant in Japanese, it must be the only language you've enabled -- you'll have to disable any other language on your device. Don't worry, though: you can still activate the voice AI simply by saying "OK, Google" even if you switch to Japanese. It certainly took Google quite a while to introduce another language for the improved Assistant experience, which boasts deeper integration and improved speech processing among other features. We could only hope that the company is working on adding support for more languages, and that Japanese is just the first of many it's planning to roll out.