World where one bot rules them all not likely

SAN JOSE, CALIF. — It’s no wonder titans of tech are locked in an epic battle of the bots, racing furiously to produce the best virtual assistant.

Their respective help-bots — Apple’s Siri, Google’s Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa and Microsoft’s Cortana — promise consumers one of the most valuable commodities in the world: free time.

Thanks to the sudden acceleration of artificial intelligence and advancements in speech recognition and big-data storage, the technology behind virtual assistants is rapidly spreading from phones to cars and homes, and the truly useful helper is approaching fast. The four giants are fighting for the biggest share of a market expected to grow to $12 billion by 2024.

“There’s a tremendous amount of promise for these agents to help and assist with many different tasks that we face every day,” said Ross Rubin, principal analyst at Reticle Research. “The more the agent can help you with, the more value it holds.”

The ultimate goal is our own personal genie in a bottle that awakens with a word or touch to liberate us from all our mundane tasks, organize our days and nights, and free us from the stress of lives that have become so terribly busy. But that’s not going to happen quite yet.

Today, the aid these virtual assistants provide remains limited. Most users of Google Home and Amazon Echo devices — which host Assistant and Alexa, respectively — stream music, play audio books, and control smarthome devices, according to surveys by San Francisco analytics firm VoiceLabs.

Still, the virtual agent’s foundation in AI means the more it learns about a user’s preferences and behaviours, the better job it can do.

So while experts predict a handful of firms will dominate in this field — most agree Apple, Google and Amazon will be major players, with Microsoft in a lesser role — they’re split on whether consumers will be served best by one bot, or more.

“People want one assistant, they don’t want two,” said Jan Dawson, chief analyst at Jackdaw Research in San Jose. “You want one assistant, to be very readily available wherever you are.”

However, the various assistants will likely end up somewhat specialized in their expertise, with Google’s Assistant, for example, excelling in providing knowledge and managing schedules, and Microsoft’s Cortana leading on gaming, said VoiceLabs CEO Adam Marchick.

In a few years, many people will use two or three different assistants, Marchick predicted.

The industry stands at a critical moment, because the first highly effective help-bot to get a foothold in a consumer’s home, phone or car will likely stay, creating a barrier to competitors, Marchick said.

In order for a virtual helpmate to run your life, it needs to engage with the providers of all the services you rely on, from your calendar app to your Uber ride. Those providers must either partner with the company operating the assistant, or design their app to integrate with the assistant. So Spotify will stream music on request via Alexa, and Honeywell’s smart-home thermostat, via Assistant, will bump up the temperature 15 minutes before Grandma’s expected arrival.

For providers, “if there is a competitive advantage to be gained, then absolutely they will do it,” said Brett Sappington, senior director of research at market research firm Parks Associates.

So far, both Google and Amazon have focused largely on homebased assistants. Google’s new Pixel phones host Assistant, but it has an uphill battle because Apple has far more phones equipped with Siri on the market, said Tim Bajarin, an analyst with San Jose market research firm Creative Strategies.

The popularity of Amazon’s Echo and Alexa notwithstanding — the company has sold more than eight million Echo devices since rolling them out in late 2014, according to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners — most people want their virtual assistant on their phones, Bajarin said.

“When you’re driving, that’s critical, or if your hands are busy.”