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Voice-based digital assistants fuel a hands-free, connected life with your phone or PC, but how well do they understand you

Five years ago, Apple gave voice to iPhone 4s through Siri, the digital assistant whom you could talk to, when in need of information. Since then, the Intelligent Personal Assistant (IPA) has evolved across multiple platforms.

When Microsoft launched its Windows 10 operating system last year, it came with its own speaking assistant Cortana in the US. It has now been extended to India on desktop, tablet or Windows phone. You can wake up Cortana while searching and ask her questions rather than typing them in the search box. We can understand why Microsoft took an extra year to activate Cortana in India: she had to learn the many accents of Indian English — and as I found, she is a good learner. She could figure out almost all of what I spoke, as long as I did it in a slow and deliberate voice. And they have trained her to react like a true desi: asked if she liked Sachin, she responds “He’s the God of cricket who’s bowled me over.”

If your phone or tablet runs on Android 4.1 or higher, you can click on the microphone symbol in the Google search box to bring up the voice assistant. Or you can get the voice search function by installing the Google Now app, if you have a non Android phone.

Amazon has just joined the voice-based business, but with a slightly different focus. It has developed a hands-free 20 cm-high, cylindrical speaker called Echo which you can control through voice, courtesy Alexa. Thanks to seven microphones and beam forming technology, she can hear you from anywhere in the room, even while she is playing the music of your choice. If your home is smart enough, you can even have Alexa turn the lights, microwave or air conditioning on or off. Echo can be ordered in the US for delivery in June, for the equivalent of Rs12,000. Eventually Amazon might integrate Alexa with its website.

Alexa, Cortana, Google Now and Siri are being called the Fab Four and all of them have to grapple with one big tech hurdle: how naturally can users speak to be understood. The Web is replete with jokes of Siri offering bizarre answers when she has doubts.

All these efforts are concentrated in a few languages including English, which touches only a small fraction of India’s one billion plus mobile phone subscribers. There is a huge opportunity for innovation here: giving voice to desi language avatars of Cortana and company. That will also address the huge challenge that so many Indian users face — using a language keypad. Like it or not, voice is the next big wave of the future.