Apple was the first to put a voice-controlled assistant on a phone and Siri has grown from being a basic interface to your iPhone’s functions to something much smarter and astute – and of course it’s found its way to macOS now as well.
Siri was criticized early on for poor speech recognition because Apple was behind rivals in “neural network” technology—that’s nerd-speak for computers that act more like human brains.
And Siri is gaining control of homes through Apple HomeKit.
Google hasn’t been all that clear about where Google Now ends and Google Assistant begins, but we’re assuming Google Assistant is the future as it rolls out to more handsets, having originally been a Pixel exclusive.
Google’s AI advanced this year with Google Home, an Echo competitor, and a new messaging app called Allo, both bearing a voice-commanded helper known simply as Google Assistant.
Of course, Google taps into its own knowledge graph to retrieve the relevant information for consumers, which gives it an advantage as it expands capabilities.
