How will voice assistants fare against AI chatbots in future
Generative AI is the talk of the town. AI chatbots that can answer questions and complete tasks with alacrity have caught the imagination of everyone. The rise of ChatGPT and its ilk coincides with the fall of AI-powered virtual assistants. Siri, Amazon's Alexa, and Google Assistant are not in vogue anymore, which brings us to the question, what does their future look like?
Why does this story matter?
OpenAI's ChatGPT started a revolution that no one expected. Even OpenAI wouldn't have imagined the kind of reception its product received. Now, every tech giant around wants to create something similar. We have seen the same phenomenon happening with voice assistants, but that was years ago. Since then, nothing much has changed with them, however. And that could spell the end for them.
Ex-Apple engineer believes Siri cannot challenge ChatGPT
Can voice assistants be improved to challenge AI chatbots? According to John Burkely, an ex-Apple engineer who worked on Siri, Apple's voice assistant cannot compete against ChatGPT or other advanced AI chatbots. He attributes this to its cumbersome design. He called Siri's database "one giant snowball." He said adding new words to Siri's database to make it competitive would take up to six weeks.
Voice assistants have several design flaws
Clunky code and databases prevent voice assistants like Siri from becoming as creative as AI chatbots. The design flaws make it very hard to add new features. Amazon's Alexa and Google Assistant rely on the same technology as Siri. Therefore, they face the same issues as Siri does. Add to that, Alexa and Google Assistant have failed to generate meaningful revenue.
Companies are now focusing more on generative AI
Tech giants have seemingly dropped their interest in improving voice assistants any further. Instead, they want to challenge the OpenAI-Microsoft tandem. Apple recently held its annual AI summit, where it talked to employees about its large language model and other AI tools. Google is also busy working on introducing products and services powered by generative AI.
AI chatbots and voice assistants will converge: Experts
The increasing popularity of generative AI could push voice assistants out of the picture. However, AI experts believe that chatbots and voice assistants will converge in the future. We might be able to control the chatbot with our voice in the near future if that comes true. American automaker General Motors is already working on a vehicle assistant powered by ChatGPT.
