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posted 11/30/21 by Achyut Shastri
Voice AIs are a huge part of our everyday lives now, from answering a call, to buying your entire shopping list with a single voice command. The most popular Voice AI’s available include: Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, and Apple’s Siri, each of them being a major fixture in many homes. The question is, which is best?
First of all, let’s dive deeper into Google Assistant. Google Assistant appears on multiple devices, including Google Home, the smart home hub, Google’s Pixel phones, Google’s Nest smart home devices, and multiple other third party products. Next up is Amazon Alexa. This voice AI is one of the most well known voice AIs and one of the most liked and used. It is most well known for its appearance in Amazon’s Echo products, ranging from the echo dot, to the echo show, etc. It is also used in Amazon’s fire tablets/e-readers. It connects directly to Amazon’s most well-known product, their shopping website. Finally, Apple’s Siri. Siri is the virtual assistant for all Apple products. It is used in their popular iPhones, iPads, Macs, Macbooks, HomePods, AirPods, etc. Siri is one of the most popular voice assistants in the world. The question is, which one of these 3 capable voice assistants is best overall?
The first criteria to think about is which voice assistant is best for answering questions? First up is Google Assistant. In one experiment, conducted by HelloTech, Google Assistant was asked 800 random questions. It was able to understand all of them and answered 93% of the questions correctly. Next up is Amazon’s Alexa. Unfortunately, when asked the same 800 questions, Amazon Alexa only correctly answered 80% of the questions. Finally, Siri, when asked the same questions, was able to closely edge out Alexa by getting 83% of the questions correct. You may be wondering “Why is this relevant?” It tells us how extensive their database is, and how effective they are at understanding requests. According to the data, Google Assistant beat both Siri and Alexa in this department. Perhaps Alexa and Siri will do better later.
The next criteria to consider is real life functions. These include things like messaging, calling, directions, etc. In this criteria, Siri shows its true capabilities. It is the best at directions, using an accompanying phone to get directions to your destination accurately, pushing directions to devices linked to your Apple ID. It is also extremely effective at messaging and calling due to the ability to connect to another Apple smart device using your Apple ID. Amazon Alexa is a close second. In terms of directions, Alexa is not the best. It is average at getting directions, however it is harder to get the directions while you are in the car since you cannot take your echo with you unless you get the Alexa App. With calling and messaging, it is quite effective, but it can only call or message other Echo devices or Alexa enabled devices. This limits who you can contact. Despite this limitation, it does have the ability to video call if you have the Echo Show. Google Assistant is neck and neck with Alexa. It is the best with directions, piggybacking off their successful application Google Maps. Unfortunately, it cannot message other people and it is not the best at calling other people since you would need to set up a Google Voice number with it. So, Siri takes the cake for calling and messaging.
The final smart assistant function to test is the connectivity to apps and devices. Let’s see how Alexa does. Alexa has the most connectivity to music apps, covering all of the most popular music apps you would want to use. It is competent at online shopping due to Amazon, although there are a few bugs, with it sometimes not understanding what you want. You would want to stick with simple requests with this feature. However, smart home compatibility is amazing. It does require devices to be Alexa-enabled, but the list of Alexa-enabled devices is enormous and is getting even bigger. In the Alexa App, you can group devices and also create routines with them, getting the most out of your smart home system.Apple’s Siri did not do well in this category. Siri, first of all, does not have much connectivity to music apps, including Spotify and Pandora. It also cannot do online shopping, which is a new feature on some AIs. Smart Home systems with Siri are also somewhat limited, given that the device you are trying to control has to be HomeKIt enabled, which is not quite as common as Alexa-enabled devices and Assistant-enabled devices. Google Assistant has quite a similar functionality in this category to Alexa. Google Assistant has more compatibility with music apps than Siri, but is trailing behind Alexa. Online shopping with Google Assistant is somewhat similar to Alexa. It has some bugs, but works overall. Google’s smart home compatibility is once again, similar to Alexa’s. It has a variety of devices you can choose and control with Google Assistant. In this category, Alexa had the most connectivity and effectiveness, with Google in second and Siri last.
So, what AI should you buy? It all depends. Alexa is great overall, along with Google Assistant, but Siri can help if you have a household dominated by Apple devices. Also, Alexa and Google Assistant are available on Apple smart devices. In my opinion, the best Voice AI is Alexa. It has decent communication capabilities and it has great compatibility and expandability. Nevertheless, these AI’s take technology to the next level and make sure that the simplest household tasks are even simpler.
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