Sky Glass Smart TV Add YouTube Voice Search
The Sky Glass smart TV has upgraded the native voice assistant to enable vocal searches on YouTube. The new feature is part of a set of upgrades for the Sky Glass TV and indicate that Sky is keen to make its voice AI as widely available as possible even as Amazon and Google push to center smart TV use on their own respective voice assistants.
Sky Glass Voice
Sky designed the Glass TV to fully integrate its television packages and related services as native features. That includes the Sky voice assistant, which can be activated by saying “Hello, Sky” instead of requiring a remote control with a microphone. Voice search of Sky’s own content has been available from launch, but the various third-party apps have not been fully connected to the voice AI. YouTube is now an exception to that limit. Viewers can awaken the voice assistant and then state their search query followed by “on YouTube” to open the search results page within the YouTube app. It matches the Netflix integration for the voice assistant, though with a much deeper pool of content. YouTube’s streamlined voice search will be followed by more app integration in the near future, according to Sky.
Sky’s voice AI upgrades may please its customers, but the YouTube integration is a reminder of how much effort Amazon and Google have made to enhance their smart TV offerings. The Amazon-produced Fire TV line includes a version with a far-field microphone for hands-free Alexa access as with the Sky Glass, but Fire TV owners can roll the dice with Netflix by asking Alexa to “Play Something on Netflix” and get something chosen by the algorithm to start playing immediately. Meanwhile, YouTube parent company Google is testing a way for Google Assistant to play a YouTube video on a Google TV as a way to answer questions instead of just recommending content options.
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