The Fall of the Voice Assistants: How Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant Lost the AI Race
The Chatbot Takeover: How virtual assistants were left in the dust
Apple executives once took to the stage in a packed auditorium on a rainy Tuesday in San Francisco to unveil the fifth-generation iPhone, which looked similar to its predecessor but boasted a new feature that captured the audience’s attention: Siri, a virtual assistant.
During the demonstration, Scott Forstall, who was then Apple’s head of software, summoned Siri by pressing a button on the iPhone and asking it various questions.
Siri effortlessly answered Forstall’s queries by providing information about the time in Paris, defining the term “mitosis,” and even presenting a list of highly-rated Greek restaurants in Palo Alto, California.
Despite being impressed by Siri’s abilities, it has been 12 years since that event, and people have grown less enthusiastic about virtual assistants powered by artificial intelligence, such as Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant.
These technologies have largely remained stagnant and have even become the subject of jokes, as seen in a 2018 “Saturday Night Live” sketch that featured a smart speaker for seniors. However, there is now a different type of…
