However, it’s always interesting to see how each voice assistant stacks up against how we actually use them. Voice assistants have received a little less attention in the past year compared to years past. Nobody was surprised when Google Assistant triumphed in a recent comparison, but it clearly highlights the margin Assistant has over Siri, Bixby, and particularly Amazon Alexa.
In recent years, Google Assistant has gained a reputation as the greatest voice assistant for smartphones, especially in terms of accuracy and general functionality. The fact that Assistant has full access to Google’s extensive model library and strong domain expertise shouldn’t come as a major surprise.
Google Assistant clearly prevailed in a comparison this week between it and Apple’s Siri, Samsung’s Bixby, and Amazon’s Alexa. But beyond the fundamentals, there were some fascinating details.
All of these voice assistants are rather competent at providing information like the weather and setting timers, though Siri bafflingly still isn’t able to do this. With the capacity to perform actions like actively interacting with programs, such as taking a picture or initiating a voice recording, Google Assistant and Bixby were deemed to have the most power over your device.
Although Google Assistant wasn’t too far behind with support for browsing through your own images and the ability to actually start playing a TV show on Netflix, Bixby has some really deep integrations here, as that’s a gap Samsung has aimed to fill with its voice assistant.
Amazon Alexa, a “colossal failure,” was obviously the loser in all of this.
This is partially due to Alexa not being a built-in feature of your smartphone, but it’s also due to Alexa’s propensity for having difficulty locating facts, inability to engage with apps, and weak conversational models, which make it a very bad option on a smartphone. Not to mention the infrequent ads for Amazon products.
However, your smart home may have a significant impact on whatever Assistant you choose to utilize. The most generally used assistant is Google Assistant, but if you’ve made significant investments in Alexa or HomeKit, you might want to go in a different direction.