Hearing unexpected Gemini accents on Google Home? A fix is coming

Google is still working through the transition from Google Assistant to Gemini across its smart home devices, and the shift hasn’t been entirely smooth. The latest hiccup has left some Google Home users puzzled after noticing that many of Gemini’s voice options don’t sound quite the way they expected.

According to a post on the r/googlehome subreddit, a handful of users say several of the available Gemini voices in the Google Home app have accents that feel unusual for English-language assistant voices. Some commenters said most of the options sound like non-native English speakers, with only one or two voices sounding closer to the accents they anticipated.

Part of the confusion may come from how the voices are presented. Most are listed only with abstract names like Bloom or Croton, rather than clearly identifying a specific accent. One of the few exceptions is Calathea, which is described as an “Australian accent,” but the poster says it doesn’t sound particularly Australian to them. In a separate thread, one user even shared a short screen recording cycling through the voice options so others could hear the differences themselves. At least in this demo, while distinct, around half of them sound South Asian in origin, including Calathea.

An official Google Nest Community account has since acknowledged the issue on both Reddit threads. The account wrote, “We are aware of this and have fixed this in the latest Google Home app version (4.11),” adding that the update should roll out to all users by this Wednesday.

What Google didn’t explain in that response is exactly what it intended to “fix”. We don’t yet know whether the same accents will persist with better labeling, or whether some that sound like they originate from non-native-speaking countries will be replaced by native-origin English ones. In any case, we won’t have to wait long to find out.