Hey Siri! Siri? Oh, well, I’ll just type it in instead… Voice assistants on phones were such a promise a couple of years ago, and yet I’m not sure how useful they really are now, in 2023. I won’t mention ChatGPT (damn it, I just did), but it seems that we’re on the brink of a shift in the way we use our phones and search for information.But let’s get back to smart assistants. A couple of years ago, I did an experiment. I tried to automate as many routines as I could using various smart assistants (including Google Assistant, Siri, and Bixby – God rest its soul, if it had any). The control was a regular touchy-feely input to get the same things done.
The results were stunning, the manual input resulted in faster times compared to all smart assistants at the time. Now, things might’ve changed since then, but I still use my fingers to do time-sensitive tasks on my phone and fire up the respective voice assistant just for fun and not very often.
Is this the case with everyone, though? I know Google Assistant can do much more in the US, and that people often drive for hours and talking to their phones is one of the safest ways to get anything done.
So, how often do you use these assistants? Are they helpful, would you rely on them to do important and/or sensitive stuff? Vote in our poll and share your “smart assistant” stories in the comments below.
