[Updated] Accent issues plague Google Assistant

Update (December 21):

As the company is not able to reproduce Google Assistant’s accent fluctuations, they are asking the affected users to share bug reports to investigate the matter. Here’s what Google employee Orrin said in his latest post:

I just reached out again for bug reports. Please respond with a bug report right after you notice this issue. We haven’t been able to repro on our end, and without a bug report, we won’t be able to investigate

Original story below:

Recently, we stumbled upon a thread on the official Pixel help forum, where some users were chiming about Google Assistant automatically changing accents on their devices. The one who started the thread complained about Assistant automatically switching to Indian English accent despite English US being set everywhere on the device.

Later some other users from the Indian subcontinent confirmed the same problem:

But the problem isn’t limited to India (or Asia, for that matter). Users from the UK, Spain, and even New Zealand are also reporting similar accent-related issues with Google Assistant on their devices. It’s worth mentioning that multiple complainants say Assistant switches accents when being queried about weather.

One of the complainants even recorded a video which clearly shows the problem:

Google knows there are accent issues with Assistant, as company employee Orrin (who is also the Community Manager at Pixel User Community) had asked users for related bug reports earlier this month.

But as complaints started piling up, a Google Forum expert recently escalated the problem, despite Google already being aware of it.

There’s no information on when the problem will be fixed, although we do hope that happens sooner than later. Are you also facing the aforementioned issue on your device? Let us know in the comments below.

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