Bergur Thormundsson
Research expert covering technology in the Nordics, AI and smart cities
Virtual Assistant Technology - statistics & facts
Virtual assistants are becoming more and more common, despite the name evoking science fiction images of digitized personal assistants. While most have not reached the capabilities of Iron Man’s Jarvis, many can help users with day-to-day tasks. These include, but are not limited to, checking the weather, ordering food, or simply playing music on command. With ongoing development of technologies, these assistants are likely to improve and change.
Popular virtual assistants
Although the technology has been available in simple forms for years, Apple’s Siri was perhaps the first to be both highly advanced and commercially available. Seeing the success of Apple’s product, tech giants like Google (Google Assistant), Amazon (Alexa), and Microsoft (Cortana) released virtual assistants of their own. Chinese tech companies such as Alibaba, Baidu, and Xiaomi have also brought to the market their own virtual assistant products, with the Baidu DuerOS and the Xiaomi Xiao AI as notable examples. Consumers are making use of these technologies in their homes, cars, and in connection with a vast range of other smart devices such as smartphones and smart speakers.Smart speakers as stand-alone vocal cords
The smart speaker market grows with the virtual assistant market, as the two are intrinsically linked. Usage of virtual assistants is somewhat bound to the use of a good smart speaker, although smartphones have begun to influence the market somewhat in recent years. Smart speaker shipments have declined slightly between 2022 and 2023 but are projected to grow again by 2026.A new age might change virtual assistant
With the ongoing generative AI revolution, the capabilities and nature of virtual assistants might change. Generative AI has the potential to vastly improve the abilities of a virtual assistant, including the ability to keep up a conversation or answer a whole host of difficult questions that more basic assistants might struggle with. The exact nature of the virtual assistant might change in the coming years, and it is unclear whether the market will become a hotbed of innovation or remain a stable side project to the smart speaker market.
