The Google Assistant can do a lot of things, but most of those are robotic actions like turning a light on/off, playing music and more. Now, an Indian ed-tech platform wants to make the Google Assistant smarter. Ed-tech firm Toppr, which caters to K-12 level students, today said it is partnering with Google to use the voice assistant for answering students’ queries on the platform. According to Toppr, the company will provide the Google Assistant will be able to use Toppr’s 1.6 million question and answer database to answer these questions.
Here’s how it works
According to Toppr, the feature will work on any device that has the Google Assistant and Toppr’s app. Students will be able to initiate a query using the regular voice command. Here’s how to do it.
- Use the simply wake work ‘Ok, Google’, followed by ‘Talk to Toppr Answr/Ask Toppr Answr/Speak with Toppr Answr”.
This basically accesses the Toppr Answr repository, which already has a set of questions and answers. So, when students pose a question, the Assistant will essentially search for that in Toppr’s database and show the likeliest answer. The company didn’t clarify whether the Google Assistant will answer the questions via voice too.
“Asking doubts is more natural than typing them out or taking pictures and uploading (them). Kids today are tech-savvy and it will be interesting to see them interact with voice assistants for their learning needs. Considering that the Google Assistant is on most Android devices, it was a natural fit for us. Toppr Answr already has 90+ million sessions/month on app & web. With Google Assistant, it has become more accessible,” said Rahul Shetty, Vice President of Product at Toppr.
The ed-tech platform had recently been acquired by Indian ed-tech unicorn Byju’s. While the amount wasn’t disclosed, the acquisition makes Toppr a part of the multi-billion dollar Byju’s ed-tech empire. While Toppr hasn’t said so, it’s possible that a successful run with Toppr could allow the larger parent company to enable such a feature in all of its subsidiary ed-tech applications.
