It seems that every respectable company should be working on its intelligent personal assistant nowadays. There is Apple's Siri, Google's Google Now, Amazon's Echo, Microsoft's Cortana, Samsung's S Voice, and even Facebook has got its own voice assistant in the pipeline, dubbed simply M. The common problem with voice assistants is that they only work flawlessly on product launch events, but hardly ever in real life. Spending some time with Google Now or Apples Siri will quickly train you to think you can't rely on either in 100%. While it is a nifty party trick to show your friends how your phone brilliantly responds to how tall is Michael Jordan or do I need an umbrella tomorrow questions, your daily interaction with the assistant will soon be reduced to wake me up at seven, pronounced to perfection. Voice assistants have been around for a while, but they are still in their nascent stage. We are yet to see more people confidently using them, rather than carefully guessing at commands they might understand. Or repeating the same simple sentence, over and over, with different intonation, to achieve the desired effect. Truth is nobody is particularly fond of talking to their phones either. An independent survey carried out in 2013 even found that 85% of Apple iPhone users had never even tried Siri. It is high time mobile phone makers stopped shoving these assistants down our throats before we ultimately learn they are awkward, useless and mostly unreliable. And stop calling them intelligent. Dear mobile phone makers, go back to the drawing board and do not come back before smart assistants get smart enough to discuss the latest episode of Big Bang Theory or presidential elections.
