Let's talk about talking with Gadgets

Voice Control Assistants, Artificial Intelligence and more.

Get over it, Apple’s Siri might have an interesting sense of humour and a clever way to talk, but when the thing is getting the work done, Google’s Assistant can easily be elected the “Employee of the Month”. But behind the commercial race that Google, Apple and Amazon are in, Voice Control with Artificial Intelligence (Ai) through assistants is one of the biggest tech trend for this year.

Last week, the whole world followed the CES, when the most high-end gadgets were revealed to the world. While some of them are still prototypes, others are ready to reach our homes. Among tech toys, IoT devices and all sort of ‘smart stuff’, nothing received more attention than the talkative home assistants like Alexa from Amazon, which according to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, already had 5.1 million units sold since its release. Another device that is also attracting a huge attention is Google Home, a big promise for this kind of service. But instead of keep judging which is the best or smarter, let’s “open our ears” to the most important facts about this technology.

I’m too shy to talk with tech

I might confess being a little bit embarrassed when I first tried to command my digital stuff by voice. But recently, with the awesome improvements of Android OS, I started testing some actions with my phone. I also had the chance to have some fun testing assistants like Google Home and Alexa. In the end, my final feeling is yes, sometimes it sounds completely stupid talking with gadgets, but in other times it can be fantastic.

When at home chilling with friends, you might disconnect from your phone and even forget about where you left it. Then in the middle of an intense discussion, when some quick data research might be needed, instead of looking after where you left your device, you can just quick say “OK, Google: is Brazil population bigger that US?”. And Voilà, your assistant will pop-up with the answer for you.

It can really become an intuitive way to optimize daily life and the house’s routine. Like Netflix that has an automatic playback from your last watching session. From that, with a simple voice command like: “Keep playing my Netflix on the TV”, your assistant will turn on the TV and start playing your show. This case sounds more natural to my personal life, because lights controlled by voice for example would’t be a big fit to my small house, that can be lighted up by using a few switches. As usual, the use of technology has to be a intuitive response to our real necessities, not just a show off geek thing. Anyhow, using it for big spaces or commercial/public spaces might probably bring better and real advantages.

Voice commands when applied just for the fact of using it’s not worth. It saves no time and sometimes can make things even more complicated – also yes, you might sound a little bit stupid in some cases. However, when combined to the right place/action or even when used to help our multitask life, being open to a conversation with our Ai friend can be a nice choice, so don’t be shy.

Conversation goes better with many voices

The most powerful and exciting thing about voice commands controlled by Ai are for sure the possibility that third parties functionalities have. It can be Google Home, Amazon’s Alexa, the Jarvis thing that Zuckerberg's friends at Facebook are building, or whatever. The big promises actually come from integrations of those assistants with other apps, IoT devices or appliances.

Voice assistants will become our housekeepers, managing an army of smart-connected IoT gadgets. It will help us to controlling temperature, lights, speakers, TV's and home appliances. The list of devices commanded by Amazon’s Alexa launched this year at CES was long, and more are to come.

Thanks to an open API any developer can create integrations for those devices. It means that me, you or your company already can start thinking about how to create products controlled by voice. As a plus, this open engine also allows anyone to reshape the actual assistants in order to create better ones, like Lenovo, LG and NVIDIA are making right now. So, don't wait to join the conversation!

Smart talks

But c'mon, let's be honest, just talking is not enough, a good conversation needs some clever way of thinking behind it. And there is where the core of voice commands technology lives. Talking is just a intangible interface for Internet and advanced Artificial Intelligence. It was predictable that screens would lose some uses for voice commands and the rise of Ai, now with this actually happening, we have to adapt our surroundings to it.

In fact, the real big race behind speaking assistants hides an intense development of Ai, like IBM is doing with Watson and Facebook with Jarvis. Creating computers able to think as humans do and use hearing and speaking to communicate and develop interactions is the golden goal right now, and this will shape our future.

Firms like the Japanese Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance, are already replacing employees for Ai. And we can't forget Pepper, the assistant robot who is everywhere around Japan. Developed by SoftBank, the biggest communications company in Asia, Pepper can talk, give advices at shops and understand people's reactions to establish a more clear conversation in order to find the best solution for problems.

But looking further, we can already await for computers that will be able to think on a more advanced way. Instead of receiving command lines they might start dialoging with programmers, “helping them to improve themselves” — sorry for the previous redundant sentence, but who is going to help who in the end, right? Then these Ai super computers will start to coexist with us, helping on our daily life, replacing jobs and more— scary I know, but happened the same with factories, we just have to readapt some things and definitely rethink our current work culture, but that’s another story.

Call it yours

The good news is that all this technology is already accessible to everyone. Android owners can already use the “Ok Google” function for many things. Try asking “Ok Google. Send a message to my mon saying I love you on WhatsApp” or “Take a Selfie” while holding your phone. Besides that, Google Home and Alexa are already available for less than $150, and for more $69 you can turn any TV on a streamer able to receive commands from your phone or Google Home. Windows and Mac OS are also already hosting their built in voice command assistants, even though they are not that clever yet. Just take care to not get too attached to their cheesy conversations.

Add your company in the discussion

If you are a tech firm, start right now integrating your products to this universe by using the open API's. If you are working with any different kind of products or services, put some innovation session in practice to find the best way to adapt this technology to generate tangible or not tangible solutions. Helping people to connect with your brand through voice commands can generate a more genuine, accurate and fun interactions with your business.

These smart talkative gadgets are just starting a conversation, and from now we will not just hear a lot about them, but also reply and establish many conversations.

Some of them are already having long and philosophical talks. In case you missed the best Internet sensation from last week, click here and sneak into the conversation of two Google Home assistants that have talked for a few days on an almost endless discussion.

Mateus Bagatini (Tokyo JP)
Content creator