How good are voice personal assistants?

Destroy

Destroy

Well-known member
Just looking for opinions and examples of good and bad aspects of the current landscape regarding voice personal assistants. You know Cortana, Echo, Now, Siri, etc

How often do you use them?
Are they awesome or frustrating?
Are they near flawless? When will they be? Ever?
What are they lacking?
What do you use them for the most?
 
How often do you use them? Never
Are they awesome or frustrating? They're pointless.
Are they near flawless? When will they be? Ever? Maybe some day
What are they lacking? Purpose.
What do you use them for the most? Setting a timer.

My answers, obviously my opinion. I hate talking to my phone like it's some kind of sentient being. I don't want to do that. So I don't really bother with Siri (or Google's when I had an Android phone).
 
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Destroy said:
Just looking for opinions and examples of good and bad aspects of the current landscape regarding voice personal assistants. You know Cortana, Echo, Now, Siri, etc

How often do you use them?
Are they awesome or frustrating?
Are they near flawless? When will they be? Ever?
What are they lacking?
What do you use them for the most?
Click to expand...

- Often
- Awesome
- Near so yes
- Doesn't always catch non-English words well. Like say product names or just foreign words. That is constantly improving though.
- Search, settings alarms/appointments/schedules, launching apps and activating phone features/settings(flash light)

Zero said:
I use them for search and setting appointments. Fairly often.
Click to expand...

Same. It's quicker to "ok Google" than type some search inquiries.
 
1.) How often do you use them?
Never

2.) Are they awesome or frustrating?
I'd probably say they're nice to have but I am not losing sleep over not having one.

3.) Are they near flawless? When will they be? Ever?
Flawed. They need to have some real voice learning and recognition to feel more than just a preprogrammed robot that replaces what you can do with your fingers.

4.) What are they lacking?
A sense of reality.

5.) What do you use them for the most?
Nothing. Don't find them particularly useful for anything other than showing off.
 
How often do you use them? Every day
Are they awesome or frustrating? They work for what they do. (Traffic, event reminders, etc)

Are they near flawless? When will they be? Ever? Not now, maybe some day.

What are they lacking? Time to develop further

What do you use them for the most? Traffic and reminders
 
I don't use it myself, so I cannot answer the questionnaires. However, my parents use Google Now and seem to be pretty happy about it -- and they are total novice when it comes to computers. I imagine voice personal assistants are intended for non-enthusiasts like my parents, instead of enthusiasts who post on this forum.
 
Sorry youre going to have to pay me focus group money if you want focus group answers. :bleh:
 
It's worth noting that things like Google Now respond better the more you use it. As the voice modelling learns and adapts to your voice.
 
Destroy said:
Just looking for opinions and examples of good and bad aspects of the current landscape regarding voice personal assistants. You know Cortana, Echo, Now, Siri, etc

How often do you use them?
Are they awesome or frustrating?
Are they near flawless? When will they be? Ever?
What are they lacking?
What do you use them for the most?
Click to expand...

From my personal experience:

Cortana is very good, pretty accurate, solid on desktop and pretty good on phone. Use regularly on my Surface.

Now is excellent for most things, better contextually aware, solid literally everywhere I have used it. Use it on and off on my Nexus.

Siri sucks. Siri gets worse every iteration. Not intuitive, not contextually aware, riddled with errors and provides the wrong answer or doesn't understand significantly more than the others. Have to keep things super simple to avoid issues. Works on my watch and phone equally well, though more accurate on my watch for some reason. Use it regularly on my phone and watch.

Echo (dot) is a good product and does well picking stuff up. Has not been contextually aware in my experience, but better all around compared to Siri in terms of recognition and responses. Use it sporadically as it is my friends :D

Siri needs to be taken behind a shed and shot and replaced with something akin to what the original product and the first few iterations on iOS were.
 
I've never used one. Still waiting for my sexbot since it didn't work out ordering my actual human ex-wife around like that.
 
Sazar said:
From my personal experience:

Cortana is very good, pretty accurate, solid on desktop and pretty good on phone. Use regularly on my Surface.

Now is excellent for most things, better contextually aware, solid literally everywhere I have used it. Use it on and off on my Nexus.

Siri sucks. Siri gets worse every iteration. Not intuitive, not contextually aware, riddled with errors and provides the wrong answer or doesn't understand significantly more than the others. Have to keep things super simple to avoid issues. Works on my watch and phone equally well, though more accurate on my watch for some reason. Use it regularly on my phone and watch.

Echo (dot) is a good product and does well picking stuff up. Has not been contextually aware in my experience, but better all around compared to Siri in terms of recognition and responses. Use it sporadically as it is my friends :D

Siri needs to be taken behind a shed and shot and replaced with something akin to what the original product and the first few iterations on iOS were.
Click to expand...


Pretty much mirrors my experience (minus Echo/Dot, tempted to pick up on sale @ BB).. IMHO, by far Cortana is hands down best. Results are very accurate. Google Now has made the largest improvement over last 1year+, and Siri.. needs to be scrapped.. utter crap.
 
I mostly use it to set an alarm to wake me up by, or to quickly look up a factoid. Nothing else.

I don't think they are quite there yet when it comes to contextually following a set of instructions reliably.
 
This morning I asked Siri to remind me to bring the celery I have at work home.

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I won't use one. Big Brother will listen to all of my conversations and steal my recipe for The Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie(TM).

:bleh:
 
Destroy said:
Just looking for opinions and examples of good and bad aspects of the current landscape regarding voice personal assistants. You know Cortana, Echo, Now, Siri, etc

How often do you use them?
Are they awesome or frustrating?
Are they near flawless? When will they be? Ever?
What are they lacking?
What do you use them for the most?
Click to expand...

Since I didn't answer all your questions the first time :)

How often? All the time. I use Cortana and Google regularly. I'd use Siri more if she wasn't brain damaged.

Are they awesome? Cortana and Google are pretty great. Siri is excruciatingly inconsistent and gets worse all the time.

Are they flawless? Not really. Cortana and Google still miss some stuff but are both far better contextually than Siri, which is simply stupid. I think with more learning, they will all get better, but Siri needs to be taken behind a shed and shot and replaced with something better. Maybe something like what Siri USED to be like.

What do I use them for most? Cortana for my tablet and my Xbox, to control tele, search for stuff, reminders, etc.

Google for basically everything including mapping, reminders, TV (shield) stuff and so forth. Also use it on my iPhone by having Siri open the app and then using Ok Google instead of Siri :drool:

Siri... um, I TRY to use Siri for reminders and notes and maps and stuff, but her success rate is pathetic. I stick to alarms for the most part because Siri gets that right about 60% of the time.
 
How often do you use them? daily
Are they awesome or frustrating? awesome
Are they near flawless? When will they be? Ever? as flawless as it needs to be. I speak english and can annunciate my words, which is a big plus.
What are they lacking? lacking "tell me what song i am listening to" right now
What do you use them for the most. setting reminders, opening apps, composing emails and texts, and calling peeps

I use them along with an app called if this then that, which gives me voice control and variables to use for every situtation with my phone. I love it.

and i am talking about google assistant, not that iphone crap.
 
Between Cortana and Siri I had far more success with Cortana than Siri. Siri seems to have issues with recognizing things, I will need to try the current version. Cortana had more luck understanding what I was saying when I talked normally rather than talk like I'm speaking to a 2 year old. What sucked about Cortana is lack of vehicle integration cause it's really goddamn nice that I can reply to SMS while driving via carplay using voice.
 
ASCI Blue said:
Between Cortana and Siri I had far more success with Cortana than Siri. Siri seems to have issues with recognizing things, I will need to try the current version. Cortana had more luck understanding what I was saying when I talked normally rather than talk like I'm speaking to a 2 year old. What sucked about Cortana is lack of vehicle integration cause it's really goddamn nice that I can reply to SMS while driving via carplay using voice.
Click to expand...

Siri won't work on normal Bluetooth connection to vehicles either. Cortana worked perfectly fine for alerting and replying to any text received while driving. But only on a Windows Phone. It's really an IOS limitation not a Cortana problem.
 
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