![]() Amazon is the market leader with 61 percent of market share of smart speakers, while Google takes 24 percent of the market. Smart speakers are now a common household item, with more than 133 million in use in the US and about 26 percent of US consumers owning smart speakers. 8 A 2019 survey estimated that more than 110 million people in the US use VAs at least monthly, a 9.5 percent jump from 2018. Furthermore, 44 percent of these survey respondents have used VAs to control another smart device at home. According to a 2018 survey, 72 percent of 1,000 participants indicated that they have used a virtual assistant. More than eight years since the debut of Siri, VA technology has penetrated US households and has become an integral part of many people’s daily lives. 7 Growth of Virtual Assistants and Smart Speakers 6 Facebook, late in the game, admitted in April 2019 that it was developing its version of a voice assistant that would work on Portal, its video call device. 5 To compete with Echo and Google Home, in 2018 Apple introduced its HomePod smart speaker that runs the Siri voice assistant. 4 Two years later, in November 2016, Google revealed its version of a virtual assistant device, Google Home. More than one million Echo devices were sold in just two weeks of its introduction. 3 Three years later, Amazon introduced its voice assistant device, Echo, on November 6, 2014. It was a huge success, with more than four million sales in the first four days of its release. Apple acquired Siri and later integrated it into the operating system of the iPhone 4S in October 2011. Siri was originally a stand-alone mobile app for iPhone. When you say, “Alexa, I am home,” Alexa will automatically turn on the lights, set the thermostat, turn on music or a radio station, and announce that you are home across your Echo devices.Īpple’s Siri is the first AI-empowered, large-scale virtual assistant program on the consumer market. 2 Alexa offers a similar feature to let users automate a set of routine tasks. ![]() For example, when you say, “Hey Google, good morning,” Google Assistant will execute a sequence of predefined tasks, such as adjusting your lights and thermostats giving you a weather report estimating your commuting time looking up your calendar providing reminders playing news, radio, or music or performing whatever tasks you preselected from its action list. Both Alexa and Google Assistant let you define routines or mini-automation to perform a set of tasks with a single voice command. Now voice assistants can perform multiple tasks in response to one request. The voice assistant is the first application that exposes consumers to the power and potential of artificial intelligence, and the spectrum of its capability continues to expand. However, it was not until recently that advances in artificial intelligence (AI), natural language processing, machine learning, and computing processing power made voice computing a reality. We see intelligent machines and robots in movies, such as the HAL 9000 killer supercomputer in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Vox, a holographic sentient librarian, in The Time Machine in written science fiction-Herbie and Robbie in Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot and on television-the computer in Star Trek. Further, VAs add a richer dimension to our relationship with technology, providing a different immersive experience and the potential to reduce our efforts in technology use.įor years, we have dreamed about conversing with machines directly. As a result, interacting with technology through speech comes most naturally and intuitively to us. The voice is how we communicate with other human beings from the time we first learn how to speak. Voice technology now lets us engage the digital world with our speech through conversational user interfaces. In the past, we interacted with computers through a keyboard, mouse, monitor, or touch screen. Sometimes called virtual assistants, digital assistants, or intelligent personal assistants, VAs represent a paradigm shift of human-technology interaction. ![]() Voice assistants (VAs), such as Amazon’s Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple’s Siri, and Microsoft’s Cortana, are computer programs designed to assist users by answering questions and performing tasks. advisors, babysitters, librarians, and entertainers. Voice allows us to command an army of digital helpers-administrative assistants.
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