A woman displays “Siri”, voice-activated assistant technology, on an Apple iPhone 4S
©AFP PHOTO / Mandy CHENG / afprelaxnews
New data from Tractica forecasts that by the end of the decade, there will be over 3.3 billion consumer devices in the world capable of operating as virtual digital assistants (VDA) and able to respond to natural language patterns and gestures.
There are currently 821 million devices, mostly smartphones ant tablets, that feature this type of technology – it enables the dictation of text messages, web searches via voice command or the ability to automatically present apps or information to a user based on location and the user’s preferences.
“Virtual digital assistants represent the fusion of speech recognition, natural language processing (NLP), and artificial intelligence (AI) and hold the potential to have a transformative impact on consumer and enterprise user interfaces,” says principal analyst Peter Cooney. “The market is at a stage where the underlying technology is capable of delivering a very robust solution, but there are advancements still to be made across the board to improve digital assistants and drive further market growth and customer acceptance.” -afprelaxnews/ Relaxnews