Who has the best personal assistant app? The growing belief is that artificial intelligence will soon be the primary way we communicate with our computers. VoiceLabs, a company that monitors people’s interaction with voice-activated personal assistants, predicts there will be 24.5 million voice-first units shipped in 2017. Such estimates seem conservative considering that every major tech company has developed a personal assistant app.
The question is: which is best? In this article, we round up the research on Google Assistant vs Siri vs Alexa. In our next article, we review the startups and up-and-coming personal app assistant challengers, like Wonder, Viv AI, Hound, and Charlie App.
Personal assistant app boom
The list of companies trying to develop the most sophisticated personal assistant app is getting longer as the tech advances. But even if the technology has come a long way, it’s still very much in its early days in terms of potential and abilities. Voice-recognition has just recently matured enough to justify developing a whole ecosystem on it, but it is still far from perfect. As a result, we now have one personal assistant app after another that offers an overall unpolished experience.
That is not to say these apps are underperforming in any way. It’s just that they are somewhat limited with the current tech. It’s perfectly understandable and even as such, they are highly useful and enjoyable and they will only improve with time.
The assistant app market is immense and subsequently growing with no clear winner-takes-all. Instead, every company has set foot in every corner of the expanding market because the opportunities are aplenty. We, the consumers, are the victors here because the more competition there is, the better products and services will be.
Determining the personal assistant app winner
Hence, ranking the best personal assistant apps is challenging, so for this article, we’ll concentrate on the trio Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa. But how do you measure such vast amount of capabilities? In order to make this as comprehensible and concise as possible, we have organized the testing into separate categories which consist of the most common commands and functions an assistant app routinely performs. Also, we tried to avoid being vague as that produces equally vague answers. Command such as “play me a video” is unspecific – it may prompt one assistant to play a random video, and another to find something genuinely titled “Video”.
Another important thing to note is the selection of devices for this purpose. Siri was tested on an iPhone 6, Google Assistant on Google Pixel XL and Alexa on Amazon Echo Dot. It’s obvious that the latter is in disadvantage for being “only” a Bluetooth speaker and without a display, which certainly makes things harder for Alexa.
Now that we’ve sorted that out, let’s begin.
Managing emails and messages
Performance on this important facet of routine tasks provided differed widely. Siri and Google Assistant were accurate in recognizing the contact’s name and content when composing and sending emails, which was not the case with Alexa. Checking for and reading new emails produced similar results, with Siri and Alexa once again on different sides of the spectrum. Interestingly, Google Assistant had trouble recognizing the commands and didn’t quite perform the tasks adequately.
As far as creating and sending messages goes, Siri and Google Assistant handled their duties with ease. Once again, Alexa has a problem with these types of tasks due to its device-based limitations, but there are some third-party solutions that make things better.
Acting as a media player
Here’s where things get interesting. Each assistant app works with different music and video streaming services. Thus, you are limited to using those services only and dependent on their library of content. There’s no uniform way to test the assistants other than to judge their respective supports for different media services.
Siri app is coupled with Apple services exclusively, Google Assistant is tied to Google Play Music and YouTube (a big plus in this case), while Alexa is, naturally, linked to Amazon services. However, the latter two offer some support for third-party apps like Spotify, with Alexa being the most flexible.
Trying to identify a song surprisingly proved to be a challenging task for both Alexa and Google Assistant, while Siri had no problems.
News and weather
All of the three assistants supplied relevant news in one form or the other, with Alexa and Google Assistant being a bit more generous with the offerings. The two provided headlines of the day with some additional options, while Siri searched for the most relevant stories.
Similar results were on the weather front, with Siri lacking in details. Google Assistant proved to be the most intuitive of the three, understanding the somewhat loosely configured questions and commands, specifying days with certain weather conditions.
Organization
One of the most important aspects of a personal assistant is its ability to organize your activities. As expected, all the assistants handled most of these tasks with ease.
For instance, setting the alarm or a reminder proved to be an effortless process for all three assistant apps. However, only Alexa was intuitive enough to ask for the AM or PM designation if not specified.
Opening apps went without any major hiccups, with Google Assistant curiously opening a browser within itself, not Chrome.
Siri provided the best results regarding calendar management. It had no trouble giving a clear overview of the existing entries and then scheduling a meeting with a contact. Alexa and Google Assistant did have some minor trouble, but nothing serious.
Travel directions and arrangements
Asking for directions from a current location is something Google’s agent, as expected, handled perfectly. It displayed a Google Maps route in a matter of seconds, whilst Siri added a few extra steps to the same process. Understandably, there isn’t much Alexa can do here in terms of visual presentation, but it does its best to identify the exact location.
When it comes to making a flight reservation, things get iffy as neither app delivers the wanted results. Hailing a ride is a different story. All three apps successfully called Uber and other similar services, depending on the app support.
Fun
Asking the trio to sing a song provided mixed results. Amazon clearly prepared Alexa for this as it burst into a song accompanied by a full orchestration. Google Assistant handled the task accordingly, while Siri was unable to comply.
Apart from their singing duties, telling a joke was successful in all three instances. Depending on your sense of humor, you’ll either find these jokes funny or bad. Additional exploration reveals snarky comments from Google’s agent and Siri’s well known sassy personality, while Alexa kept things formal.
In the game department, Google Assistant is the clear winner with a number of games, while Siri and Alexa seriously lag behind in this sub-category. Google’s agent features a pack of trivia games, digital version of Rubik’s Cube, Crystal Ball and more.
End results: the best personal assistant app is Google
Based on our test, Google Assistant provides the best all-around experience. Still, it is only slightly better than Alexa and Siri. This is an excellent result for the newcomer but, after all, is no huge surprise given Google is the synonym for getting information. In a way, each “contestant” is a good choice based on these merits alone as none really excels nor falls behind to make it a clear winner or loser.
Still, there are a few things to consider when choosing a personal assistant app.
Alexa is great for simple tasks that do not require much of your attention. Still, it is ultimately constrained to a few devices only. Amazon is competing with Google and Apple, companies that have a proven record with consumers in terms of both hardware and software. Apple is among the largest smartphone manufacturers in the world, while Google’s Android operating system powers the vast majority of smartphones globally. Most of those could theoretically update to Google Assistant, which is something Amazon nor Apple cannot replicate. Gartner, a research firm, estimates 20 percent of user interactions with smartphones will be through virtual personal assistants by 2019. The rest of the personal assistant focus will be on smart devices.
What’s next? Smart-anything partnerships
The smart home is obviously the main draw for each of the three companies here. This is currently the main battle arena and will be in the near future, but not the only one. The latest Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas saw companies like LG, GE, Ford and others announcing products that can connect to Alexa. Of course, Google, Apple and the rest are following up with partnerships of their own. It will be interesting to see how the battle for the AI assistant supremacy develops in the near future.
Looking strictly through a device-based experience, Amazon is currently ahead with its line of Echo speakers. Google recently presented Google Home as a viable candidate in the smart home market. Apple is apparently also working on its own Echo-like device. Alexa currently gives Amazon an edge by not being bound to a certain platform like its counterparts and with a huge number of third-party skills. Nevertheless, it’s still “stuck” in a speaker for the most part, which is why Google Assistant provides a better experience as a software component of a larger ecosystem.
Conclusion
As it is usually the case with these comparisons, every assistant has its advantages and disadvantages. While the Google Assistant proved to be the best digital agent at the moment, these are mostly nuances that separate the three assistants from each other in terms of overall functionality. When it comes to sheer volume of capabilities and skills, Alexa is in front. Google Assistant is the winner of the integration and device circulation race. Siri, the first widespread voice assistant, does a little bit of everything.
As we mentioned before, these are still somewhat rough experiences that sometimes require a concentrated effort on your part. This is most evident with phrasing as the apps lack in accuracy and an understanding of context. Sometimes, you’ll get better and faster results with a simple browser search.
Ultimately, it all comes down to little things and personal preferences or routine, if you will. However, with the rapid advance of artificial intelligence, next year’s comparison could generate completely different results.
November, 2017 Update
While the reviewers at Best AI Assistant still believe Google Assistant is the best personal assistant app, some new facts warrant an update:
-Amazon Alexa has an estimated 15,000 skills
-Google Assistant now has approximately 378 apps
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-Siri on iOS 11 features improved voice recognition, smarter machine learning and an improved visual interface.
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