How Smart Are 'Smart' Assistants?
How Smart Are 'Smart' Assistants?

By Felix Richter

According to research conducted by digital agency Stone Temple 'smart assistants' may not be quite as smart as they are made out to be.

Many industry experts predict that our interactions with computing devices will move away from text-based input towards voice-based input in the future. Smartphones, voice-enabled speakers and other devices already come with so-called smart assistants such as Siri, Cortana or Google Assistant. These virtual assistants can help you organize your day, control smart home devices and answer general questions. Or can they?

According to research conducted by digital agency Stone Temple "smart assistants" may not be quite as smart as they are made out to be. Take Amazon's Alexa for example: the assistant powering the company's popular line of voice-enabled speakers was able to answer just 20.7 percent of the 5,000 questions fired at it as part of the experiment. Notably, Google Assistant and Microsoft's Cortana were much more knowledgeable when it came to these factual questions while Apple's Siri performed similar to Alexa.

The chart above shows how well digital voice assistants can answer basic questions.

Software & Apps "How Smart Are 'Smart' Assistants?"