Aussies and Brits living abroad in the US can now get a taste of home with British and Australian voices now available on US Google Homes

The threat of home sickness for Aussies and Brits living abroad is being offset (well, a tiny bit) with the introduction of British and Australian accented voices to Google Homes across the US.

The voices are the same as we’ve come to know and love here in Australia and in the UK. The functions are the same, it’s just in a new accented voice. The voices are built using the deep neural networks behind Google’s Artificial Intelligence model DeepMind, which generates the voices using the speech synthesis model WaveNet.

Google began offering residents in the UK more choices for voices after Google I/O earlier this year, including male voices that includes celebrity singer John Legend. Google represents the voices with a colour rather than a name, and it’s extended to the new British and Australian accented voices with “Sydney Harbour Blue” for the Australian voice, and “British Racing Green” for the British voice.

There’s no word on if, or when we’ll be seeing any new voices here in Australia, and while I do love the Google Home voice it’d be nice to get some choice. At least you can get a taste of home in the US now.