Everybody is talking about Virtual Assistants, but how are people really using them?

Voice activated virtual assistants are growing rapidly in number, variety and visibility, driven by media coverage, corporate communications, and inclusion in a growing variety of devices. This trend can also be observed by how difficult it is becoming to find, among internet users, people who have not used or even heard of this new technology. Having said this, there is a visible shortage of academic research on this topic. Therefore, in the interest of creating a knowledge base around voice activated virtual assistants based on artificial intelligence, this multi-country exploratory research study was carried out. It concludes by providing information about the usage of four main voice activated virtual assistants (Siri, Google Assistant, Cortana and Alexa), comparisons between virtual assistant most frequently used and countries, and finally it establishes the base for further research activities.

Content

Author and article information

Contributors

Dr Marta Perez Garcia

Sarita Saffon Lopez

Hector Donis

Conference

Publication date: July 2018

Publication date (Print): July 2018

Pages: 1-5

Affiliations

[0001]Telefonica R&D

Madrid, Spain

[0002]Telefonica Digital

Madrid, Spain

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/HCI2018.96

SO-VID: cebfbdb7-b28e-47ab-8b6e-c19015e12ab7

License:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: Proceedings of the 32nd International BCS Human Computer Interaction Conference

Conference acronym: HCI

Conference number: 32

Conference location: Belfast, UK

Conference date: 4 - 6 July 2018

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: Human Computer Interaction Conference

History

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1477-9358 BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/HCI2018.96

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

References

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Comments

Comment on this article

[1] Stuart J. RussellP. Norvig 2009 Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (3rd ed.) Prentice Hall Upper Saddle River, New Jersey

[2] Stuart J. RussellP. Norvig 2003 Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (2nd ed.) Prentice Hall Upper Saddle River, New Jersey

[3] H.A. Simon 1965 The Shape of Automation for Men and Management Harper & Row, New York New York

[4] M. Minsky 1967 Computation: Finite and Infinite Machines Prentice-Hall Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey

[5] P. Jackson 1998 Introduction to Expert Systems (3rd ed.) Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co. Boston, Massachusetts

[6] P. McCorduck 2004 Machines Who Think (2nd ed.) A. K. Peters, Ltd Natick, Massachusetts

[7] A. Samuel 1959 Some Studies in Machine Learning Using the Game of Checkers IBM Journal of Research and Development 3 3 211 229

[8] J.R. KozaF.H. Bennett. D. AndreM.A. Keane 1996 Automated Design of Both the Topology and Sizing of Analog Electrical Circuits Using Genetic Programming Artificial Intelligence in Design ’96 151 170

[9] A. LallyJ.M. PragerM.C. McCordB. K. BoguraevS. PatwardhanJ. FanJ. Chu-Carroll 2012 Question analysis: How Watson reads a clue IBM Journal of Research and Development 56 3.4 2:1 2:14

[10] Z. Zhang 2012 Microsoft kinect sensor and its effect IEEE MultiMedia 19 2 4 10

[11] J. X. Chen 2016 The evolution of computing: AlphaGo Computing in Science & Engineering 18 4 4 7

[12] Y. ArafaA. Mamdani 2000 Virtual personal service assistants: towards real-time characters with artificial hearts 5th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces, New Orleans, Louisiana January 9-12, 2000 9 12 ACM New York, New York

[13] C. Castelfranchi 1998 Modelling social action for AI agents Artificial Intelligence 103 1-2 157 182

[14] P. J. MartínJ. S. Allende 2015 De Eliza a Siri: La evolución Tecnología y desarrollo 8 3 30

[15] J. KiselevaK. Williams, Hassan A. AwadallahA. C. CrookI. ZitouniT. Anastasakos 2016 Predicting user satisfaction with intelligent assistants 39th International ACM SIGIR conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, Pisa, Italy July 17-21, 2016 45 54 ACM New York, New York

[16] M.G. Siegler 2011 The iPhone 4S: Faster, More Capable, And You Can Talk To It. TechCrunch http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/11/iphone-4s-review/ (2018/02/15)

[17] E. Barnett 2011 Google’s Eric Schmidt: Apple’s Siri could pose ’threat’ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/eric-schmidt/8873664/Googles-Eric-Schmidt-Apples-Siri-could-pose-threat.html (2018/02/15)

[18] S. O’Kane 2016 Siri’s big upgrades won’t matter if it can’t understand its users http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/14/11925076/siri-apple-wwdc-ios-updates-voice-recognition (2018/02/15)

[19] J. Kahn 2017 Apple engineers share behind-the-scenes evolution of Siri & more on Apple Machine Learning Journal http://9to5mac.com/2017/08/23/evolution-siri-machine-learning-journal/ (2018/01/22)

[20] R. LeFebvre 2017 Google Assistant now accepts typed and verbal cues http://www.engadget.com/2017/05/17/google-assistant-now-accepts-typed-and-verbal-cues/ (2018/02/18)

[21] C. Welch 2017 Google Assistant will soon search by sight with your smartphone camera http://www.theverge.com/2017/5/17/15648128/google-assistant-camera-sight-search-feature-io-2017 (2018/02/18)

[22] P. Miller 2017 You’ll soon be able to send money with Google Assistant http://www.theverge.com/2017/5/18/15660728/google-assistant-payment-api-peer-to-peer-money-money-money-io-2017 (2018/02/18)

[23] Pega Systems Inc 2017 What Consumers Really Think About AI: A Global Study May 18 2018 http://www.pega.com/ai-survey

[24] Statista 2017 Worldwide intelligent/digital assistant market share in 2017 and 2020, by product May 18 20118 from http://www.statista.com/statistics/789633/worldwide-digital-assistant-market-share/

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