How Virtual Assistants may become the next big thing
Google Assistant was launched 3 years ago in May 2016, and Alexa was launched nearly 5 years ago in November 2014. Both assistants have come a long way since then. Numerous amount of upgrades and integration has allowed them to sustain their markets and move forward
These assistants have become an integrated part of many people’s daily life. For example, I extensively use google assistant to either send a mail or to navigate to someplace while driving as it proves to be a safer and secure option compared to entering the destination while driving (never do it).
These assistants work on a technology known as speech recognition. Speech recognition helps to convert our speech into text. They use machine learning to evolve and cater to daily needs. They record conversations and then optimize and work on them to give you a better and realistic response next time.
A significant breakthrough in this industry was the launch of Google Duplex. It was launched in Google I/O last year.
Google Duplex changed how people see virtual assistants. Duplex is an attempt to imitate a personal assistant who can take care of most of the things. Its launch couldn’t have been more perfect as people are getting more and more occupied daily and they require someone to carry out basic tasks such as booking a salon appointment for them. Google duplex uses AI to create natural-sounding phrases with realistic tones and pauses like an actual human being. It also recognizes and learns what other person wishes to convey and then respond to it appropriately. Here is a small video of Google I/O working. It’s incredible to see how technology can advance.
How these Assistants keep up with new developments?
The best feature of these assistants is that anyone can work on them. This solves two major problems. The first one is that if only google or amazon had control over the assistants’ resources, then they would have to invest a lot more than they have now. They had to create a massive amount of data for these assistants to process. The second one is keeping up with new hardware.
Google has made moves in making Assistant more ubiquitous by opening the software development kit through Actions, which allows developers to build voice into their products that support artificial intelligence. Another one of Google’s speech-recognition products is the AI-driven Cloud Speech-to-Text tool, which enables developers to convert audio to text through deep learning neural network algorithms. This opens a vast market for these assistants, as well as the developers. The great thing is that both the companies provide tutorials and documentation to work with their respective assistants, and they provide perks to the developers for publishing there 1st app or skill or after crossing a certain milestone.
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When it comes to integrating voice technology with other products, Amazon has been ahead of the game. Those who use Alexa will be familiar with the fact that the voice assistant is already integrated into a vast array of products, including Samsung’s Family Hub refrigerators. Google has finally caught on and has announced Google Assistant Connect. The idea behind this technology is for manufacturers to create custom devices that serve specific functions and are integrated with the Assistant.
This has over the years encouraged millions of people to develop certain app or skill for these assistants which are partially responsible for their huge success
Change in our lifestyle
I use Google Assistant a lot while driving, to control my TV by wireless means, but mostly I use it to find meanings of the words that I don’t know how to spell but know their pronunciation. Virtual Assistants are already being used extensively, but as the technology is developing, the market for these assistants is doubling.
Privacy is a buzz around these days, and I understand it, but I believe that people prefer ease over privacy. People would prefer that they can book tickets to a movie by saying, “Hey Google, book me 2 tickets to Life of Pi for any show between 3 pm to 5 pm at PVR Saket” rather than going to an app and then booking the tickets. In this case, when assistant books tickets on your behalf, you are automatically authorizing it to do transactions via your card under your name, meaning giving up privacy, and I believe most people will be fine with that.
Things like these have great potential in the market. A great idea which I can see happening is the integration of assistants with self-driven vehicles. After a long shopping day, you can just say, “Hey Google, bring my car to the entrance of the complex” and just like that your car would come to you. The same is with the home automation, where almost every electronics connected to WiFi can be controlled via any assistant.
The fact that they ease out the process and keep up with the ever-evolving trend is the biggest reason I think that the assistant is the next big thing in the tech industry, and in upcoming years, people will be highly dependent on these assistants for a variety of tasks.
In 2020, we can see a greater interest in the development of voice-enabled devices. This will include an increase in mid-level devices: devices that have some assistant functionality but aren’t full-blown smart speakers. Instead, they communicate with your smart speaker, display or even perhaps your phone over Bluetooth where the processing happens on those devices
Voice-enabled apps will not only accurately understand what we are saying, but how we are saying it and the context in which the inquiry is made.
However, there are still several barriers that need to be overcome before voice applications will see mass adoption. Technological advances are making voice assistants more capable, particularly in AI, natural language processing (NLP), and machine learning. To build a robust speech recognition experience, the artificial intelligence behind it has to become better at handling challenges such as different accents and background noise. And as consumers are becoming increasingly more comfortable and reliant upon using voice to talk to their phones, cars, smart home devices, etc., voice technology will become a primary interface to the digital world, and with it, expertise for voice interface design and voice app development will be in higher demand.
If anyone wishes to start working on these assistants or is interested in working with them, I believe now is the right time to start.
