Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Google is launching new voices for Google Assistant in nine countries today, adding a secondary voice option outside the US for the first time. When users set up a new Android phone, the default voice will also be chosen at random, so there’ll be a mix of people getting the old and new voices, though you can still change later if you want to.
New voices are available for Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Norwegian in their respective countries. New English voices are also being launched in India and the UK.
Google’s Assistant — like all of the other major smart assistants — launched with a traditionally female-sounding voice. Google has been trying to move…