Alexa, Siri, Cortana, and more: An introduction to voice assistants.
Abstract
Voice assistants are software agents that can interpret human speech and respond via synthesized voices. Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, Microsoft's Cortana, and Google's Assistant are the most popular voice assistants and are embedded in smartphones or dedicated home speakers. Users can ask their assistants questions, control home automation devices and media playback via voice, and manage other basic tasks such as email, to-do lists, and calendars with verbal commands. This column will explore the basic workings and common features of today's voice assistants. It will also discuss some of the privacy and security issues inherent to voice assistants and some potential future uses for these devices. As voice assistants become more widely used, librarians will want to be familiar with their operation and perhaps consider them as a means to deliver library services and materials.
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Between 2010-2014, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google all introduced AI-based voice assistants into phones and other Internet-of-Things devices.
“Between 2010–2014, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google all introduced AI-based voice assistants into phones and other Internet-of-Things devices [27].”
From Artificial intelligence and machine learning in mobile apps for mental health: A scoping review (2022) · cites this paper as [27]
Voice assistants such as Alexa and Google Assistant provide access to their APIs, opening up the possibility of developing custom applications.
“Voice assistants such as Alexa and Google Assistant provide access to their application programming interfaces (APIs), opening up the possibility of developing custom applications (Hoy, 2018;Coates, 2019;Walls, 2022).”
From Use and acceptance of voice assistants among people with aphasia in Germany (2023) · cites this paper as Hoy, 2018
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“Recent research has shown that voice assistants can benefit dementia sufferers by providing an ever-present voice that can answer the same questions again and again without losing patience and offer encouragement when needed.(12) For others, reading the instructions their physician provides can be difficult.”
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“These applications range from voice-activated assistants like Siri and Alexa [1, 2] to transcription services [3], and extend to telecommunication systems [4] and hearing aids [5].”
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Use and acceptance of voice assistants among people with aphasia in Germany
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- Authors
- Hoy, M. B.
- Affiliations
- Mayo Clinic (US)
- Corresponding author
- Hoy, Matthew B.
- ORCID
- Hoy, Matthew B.
- Venue
- Medical Reference Services Quarterly
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2018-01-02
- Volume
- 37
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 81-88
- ISSN
- 0276-3869 (ISSN-L)
- 1540-9597
- OpenAlex
- W2783089003
- Cited by
- 965
- References
- 5
- Citations by year
- 2026: 65 · 2025: 126 · 2024: 135 · 2023: 138 · 2022: 135 · 2021: 189 · 2020: 114 · 2019: 55 · 2018: 8
- FWCI
- 51.51
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Medical Reference Services Quarterly (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Speech and dialogue systems
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › AI in Service Interactions
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Speech Recognition and Synthesis
- Keywords
- voice assistants, speech recognition, text-to-speech, Siri, Amazon Alexa, Cortana, Google Assistant, home automation, privacy, security (computing), library services
- MeSH terms
- Libraries, User-Computer Interface, Computer Security, Privacy, Internet, Speech Recognition Software
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