Google Assistant uses AI to predict if your flight will be delayed

When you're taking a flight, you can check the arrivals and departures section of your airport website to see if you're going to take off on time, or just rely on an airline announcement. Or you could just ask Google Assistant.

Google has announced that it will start to predict flight delays, using a combination of historic flight information and machine learning. The company says that it is able to deliver predictions with 85 percent confidence.

See also:

• Google relents and hands duck.com to privacy-centric rival DuckDuckGo
• Google+ to close down earlier than planned after another data leak is discovered
• Google to kill off Allo as the company streamlines messaging in its own unique way

This is not the first time Google has offered predictions about flights being delayed. Earlier in the year the company started to provide similar predictions if you search for information about your flight. With December being a particularly busy time for travel, Google thought that this was a good time to expand the predictions to Google Assistant.

Announcing the feature, Google says:

To help with the increase in delayed flights this time of year, the Google Assistant now shows you predicted flight delays, too. You can ask things like, "Hey Google, is my flight on time?" or "Hey Google, what's the status of the American Airlines flight from Philadelphia to Denver?"

And to make it easier to stay up-to-date on changes to your flight time, over the next few weeks the Assistant will begin proactively notifying you on your phone if we predict a flight delay and tell you the reason if we know it.

Image credit: Jaromir Chalabala / Shutterstock