The Google Assistant is getting a new feature today, called Your News Update. The feature expands the Assistant"s ability to read the news aloud, allowing it to play a selection of tailored news articles aloud based on the user"s interests and giving them a way to stay on top of current events.
Your News Update is a new kind of news playlist, so if you"d like to try it out, you"ll need to head into your Assistant settings and choose the new option instead of News briefings. Once the feature is enabled, you can say "Hey Google, play me the news" to begin listening to your personalized digest of news.
The stories included in the Your News Update are based on your interests, location, history, and preferences, in addition to top news stories from the web. The news update will start out with headlines and shorter content, but if you listen for longer, you"ll start to hear longer stories about your interests. The Assistant will serve as something of a news host, introducing the topics and publishers coming up next.
The Your News Update feature is rolling out to users in the United States using the Assistant in English and will expand to other markets in 2020. As mentioned above, you"ll need to enable from the News category of the Assistant settings.