What AI and voice activation will do for brands in the home

What the new era of voice-activated devices in a home environment will do to the way consumers interact with brands


Competitive landscape

Google and Amazon don’t have the market all to themselves, however. Apple’s Siri is installed across late model Apple devices including PCs and Apple TV devices, with a dedicated AI smart speaker system, to come in 2018.

Verto Analytics reports Siri remains the most popular virtual assistant with 41.4 million monthly active users in the US. However, Siri has also experienced a 15 per cent decline since last year, with engagement dropping by nearly half during this period.

Microsoft also entered the fray in 2014 with the launch of its Cortana AI across multiple devices including PCs, phones and Microsoft’s Xbox gaming consoles. Verto Analytics puts its usage at much lower than Apple with 0.7 million monthly users in the US, although this was a 350 per cent increase on the previous year.

Siri is a key component of Microsoft’s Azure cloud technology platform. Microsoft engineering leader for Azure in Australia, James Kavanagh, says Cortana is meeting the desire to move to a conversational interface where they can engage with computers in a different way.

“We are seeing the gradual progression towards that, where people are trying to figure out where the channel fits, what the interface should feel like, and what is the limit of the technology,” Kavanagh says.

But while AI-based interfaces are delivering more natural forms of interaction, there are potential roadblocks ahead. The most notable is privacy.

The mechanism these technologies rely on to interact – through listening – is always on. While vendors have reassured the public the devices only become active when specific key phrases are spoken (such as ‘OK Google’), questions have been raised as to how easily such privacy mechanism might be circumvented.

Dull has considered carefully herself before inviting so many devices into her home.

“How do I ensure that Alexa is not sitting there and eavesdropping?” she asks. “The answer is, I don’t know. I have to trust what Amazon is telling me: That the only time these start recording is when I give the key word.”

Having so many AIs in her home can also lead to frustrations based on the differences in how they work.

“The data that Amazon would have on me, and where it is getting its information to answer my questions, is very different to the Google Home experience, because Google knows me in a very different way,” Dull says. “So I get frustrated with Alexa because she doesn’t know me the same way that Google knows me.”

While AI-based interaction is still in its relative infancy, the speed with which consumers took to mobile web suggests that it may only be a short period before AI-based interaction is in the mainstream.

For this reason, Finch says it is important brands take the time now to understand how these changes might impact future generations of customers.

“Think about the generations growing up with this technology, and how natural technology is going to be to them,” Finch says. “They are going to expect delivery in smart and natural ways that we have never seen before.”

Read more of CMO's coverage on AI and its impact in marketing:

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