Explained | How ChatGPT overtook 'dumb as rock' voice assistants Alexa and Siri

OpenAI's next-generation Artificial Intelligence engine GPT-4 which powers ChatGPT, is being deemed as 'impressive' by technologists worldwide. As ChatGPT and related Artificial Intelligence-powered chatbots continue to blow the minds of people with their constantly improving responses, earlier virtual assistants such as Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri are being seen as trailing behind OpenAI's scale of Artificial Intelligence-oriented innovation.

Apple launched Siri in 2011 while unveiling the fifth-generation iPhone. Other competing virtual assistants such as Amazon's Alexa and Google Assistant followedsuit in later years. However, over the past decade, these products by three of the world's biggest technology giants have hit several roadblocks, halting their scale of innovation.

The excitement around chatbots illustrates how Siri, Alexa and other voice assistants — which once elicited similar enthusiasm — have squandered their lead in the AI race, New York Times reported.

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Voice assistants 'dumb as rock': Microsoft's Satya Nadella

Microsoft's recent introduction of ChatGPT to its Bing search engine is giving important user growth dividends to the company, reports say. In 2016, Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella said that "bots are the new apps". But in a startling course-correction, starting 2019, Microsoft began investing into OpenAI, the ChatGPT maker. It expanded the "multi-year, multi-billion dollar" partnership with OpenAI in January 2023, leading the Silicon Valley's race of AI-driven innovation.

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"They were all dumb as a rock," Nadella told the Financial Times last month.

"Whether it’s Cortana or Alexa or Google Assistant or Siri, all these just don’t work. We had a product that was supposed to be the new front-end to a lot of [information] that didn’t work.”

How voice assistants were left behind in the AI race

The essential difference comes from the kind of technologies that they are built upon. The ChatGPT is built over large language models, which are systems trained to recognise and generate text based on enormous data sets scraped off the web.

In contrast, Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant are built on command-and-control systems. They can understand a definite list of questions with spoken clarity and requests like "Will it rain in Delhi today?" or “Turn on the bedroom lights.” However, if a user asks the virtual assistant to do something that is not in its code, the virtual assistant simply says it cannot help.

Another reason that they fell behind the ongoing AI Chatbot wave of innovation is 'cumbersome design'.

According to John Burkey, a former Apple engineer who worked on Siri, several technological hurdles hit the innovation with which the Virtual Assistants were expected to evolve with.

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Burkey was given the job to improve Siri in 2014. Siri’s database contains a huge list of words in nearly two dozen languages.

That made it "one big snowball," Burkey was quoted as saying by the New York Times. If someone wanted to add a word to Siri’s database, he added, "it goes in one big pile."

Therefore, seemingly simple updates, such as adding some new phrases to the data set, required rebuilding the entire database, which could take up to six weeks, Burkey added.

Adding more complex features like new search tools could take nearly a year, implying there was no path for Siri to become a creative assistant like ChatGPT, according to Burkey

Way forward for Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant

For Alexa

Amazon has said that it is fully committed to Alexa and "as optimistic as ever".

"The fact is Alexa continues to grow. Engagement increased more than 30 per cent globally in 2022, more than 50 per cent of Alexa customers are now using it to shop," an Amazon executive was quoted as saying by Financial Times.

While many have viewed Alexa as a "glorified clock radio", disputing its scale of innovation with latest OpenAI creations such as ChatGPT, it still is the market leader in the Voice Assistant segment.

Eight years after its soft-launch in early 2014, calling out 'Alexa' now results in a robotic response in the homes of about 20 per cent of the US population, according to Amazon.

For Google Assistant

In what Google refers to as "conversational actions", the company said that by June 2023 it will end access for third-party conversational actions. Google expects a voice assistant revival from generative AI, which could help make its assistant much smarter than present.

Google reportedly told the New York Times that it was committed to providing a great virtual assistant to help people on their phones and inside their homes and cars. The company is also separately testing a chatbot called Bard.

For Siri

Apple has successfully used Siri to push people to buy iPhones, reports suggest. The company has invested in creating an ecosystem for people to utilise Siri for using its App Store. The company recently held an annual AI summit at its headquarters last month. Members of the Siri team have reportedly been testing language-generating concepts every week.

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