What is a voice assistant? Simply explained

Everyone has probably come into contact with a voice assistant at some point. However, it is by no means just a digital gimmick

Voice Assistant – digital help for everyday life

The development of voice assistants has made groundbreaking progress in recent years. Gone are the days when you had to repeat the same sentence 30 times and in the end everything possible happened, just not what you actually wanted.

• Voice assistants have now developed to such an extent that they can be seamlessly integrated into almost any household. Many people use them, perhaps sometimes without even realizing it. Whether it’s Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, the route planner in your car, Google’s Assistant or Amazon’s Alex, voice assistants are right in our midst.

• The rapid development of voice assistants has been made possible not least by advances in artificial intelligence (AI). In particular, advances in the field of natural language processing have enabled voice assistants to understand the subtleties of human speech quite well.

• These are now able to interpret what they “hear” accordingly, filter out the essentials and react correctly. They also continue to learn. For example, they can adapt to the pronunciation and choice of words of the respective user so that communication between the user and the voice assistant is constantly optimized and improves over time.

• In short: the result is an almost seamless, functioning communication between man and machine, as one would occasionally wish for in human-human communication.

• In addition to the fun of playing around and the convenience factor à la “Alexa, play my favorite song”, there is an important background behind the research work on voice-activated home assistants: with the help of technologies such as the voice assistant, the lives of many people with health impairments are greatly improved.