Alternative to Google conversational action

Question

Google recently announced that Google Conversational actions are getting deprecated, and will be removed completely by 13th June 2023.

1. Does that mean my existing actions will be deleted?
2. Does that mean smart home actions will also get removed in future?
3. Does that affect dialog flow actions?
4. What are the alternatives to the conversational action available now apart from App actions which google recommends?
5. Is there any way to develop a skill like we are doing for Alexa?

I don't have an android app to use the app actions and my primary audience is not app users. My audience uses Google Nest Mini or Google Nest Audio.

If App actions are the only way then do I need to develop and publish the app with App Actions by procuring the Android Developer account and force/request my users to install the application? And if so what do I need to do for iOS users?

Answer 1

Some answers:

Does that mean my existing actions will be deleted?

In short - yes.

The projects will likely remain, but the Action part of them will not. Google will take care of that cleanup sometime after the sunset date.

Will smart home actions get removed in the future?

Probably not, no. Tho they will likely change over time.

Smart Home Actions were very very different creatures than Conversational Actions since they had a limited vocabulary that was defined per device type.

As more and more devices become Matter compatible, they will be relying on the Matter support more.

What about Dialogflow?

It depends what you mean by that question.

Dialogflow is a separate product from Google, and it is not going away. At least not as part of this announcement. You can create products that use Dialogflow for the Natural Language Understanding (NLU) component and that will continue to operate.

Dialogflow's integration with the Google Assistant, however, will be going away on June 13th 2023.

What are the alternatives besides App Actions?

For Google devices? None, really.

There is no announced product that will provide the same kind of third party integration with Smart Speakers or Smart Displays. And Android Apps do not run on these devices at this time.

Will that change in the future? Who knows. Google has not announced anything, and they typically do not pre-announce things.

Is there any way to develop the equivalent of an Alexa skill?

No.

So I need to make an App Action and have my users switch?

It is more complicated than that.

App Actions are not direct replacements for Conversational Actions - they have different features:

• While Conversational Actions are designed for either single-shot or multi-turn interactions, App Actions can only handle a user request that takes you into your app, or a user request where you return a widget that may include voice.

• App Actions have a set of Built In Intents (BIIs) that they are optimized to work with, while Conversational Actions let you build the possible trigger phrases from the user.

• App Actions allowed for dynamic shortcuts that your app can control, but Conversational Actions required the user to create a routine on their own.

Note the important bit - if you are counting on a conversation, App Actions won't give it to you. There are some possible alternatives, tho they require work:

• Once launched you can have your app open the microphone and handle the Speech-To-Text yourself or use Dialogflow streaming audio intent processing.

• Although still in developer preview, Alexa for Apps may be able to handle a conversation inside the app with Alexa processing it.

What do I need to do for iOS users?

Use the native iOS support for App Intents, which seems to be very similar to App Actions.