Google Now gets smarter: Personal assistant works inside apps and reads your conversations

Google has improved its Now service, which now provides information based on what's on your smartphone or tablet screen, and what you're texting friends about.

As part of the new Android M operating system which is coming in the third quarter of this year, the updates to Now mean it can provide information, trailers, reviews and showing times for films being discussed in text or email conversations. It can also pull up details for restaurants mentioned, and link to other relevant apps such as OpenTable and Yelp.

Google said Now understands over 100 million places located in its Maps app database.

A tap and hold of the home button from anywhere in the Android operating system launches Now and brings up options based on what it thinks might be helpful to you at that moment. For example, when listening to a song on Spotify you can say 'Ok Google, who's the lead singer?' and get the answer right away.

Google said in a blog post: "This is another way developers can get their apps in front of their users at the right moment, when an app is relevant to the task at hand. And best of all, developers don't need to do anything to integrate with Now on tap as long as they have their apps indexed by Google.

The company said it would have "a lot more details [to share] over the coming months." Android M is available as a preview to developers now, and will be coming to consumers in the third quarter of 2015.