Not long ago, it seemed as if we were years (if not decades) away from a competent digital assistant, let alone a capable one. I was one of the earliest adopters of the Google Assistant when it launched in 2016, even going as far as rooting my phone to pretend it was a Pixel and get early access to it. A year later, I bought my first smart speakers with grand ambitions to use them as digital assistants, smart home controllers, and everything in between.
Needless to say, it didn’t take long for the novelty to wear off and for everyone to notice that neither Google’s Assistant nor Amazon’s Alexa were very intelligent. I’m sure you’ve heard the “Sorry, I can’t help with that yet!” response countless times by now, but the language inflexibility has always bothered me far more. Simply changing the order of words will typically result in those chatbots no longer understanding my intent.
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