Why voice assistants should stick to sounding like robots
0Reported today on TheNextWeb
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Why voice assistants should stick to sounding like robots
More than 200m homes now have a smart speaker providing voice-controlled access to the internet, according to one global estimate. Add this to the talking virtual assistants installed on many smartphones, not to mention kitchen appliances and cars, and that's a lot of Alexas and Siris.
Because talking is a fundamental part of being human, it is tempting to think these assistants should be designed to talk and behave like us. While this would give us a relatable way to interact with our devices, replicating genuinely realistic human conversations is incredibly difficult. What's more, research suggests making a machine sound human may be unnecessary and even dishonest. Instead, we might need to rethink how and why we interact with these assistants and learn to embrace the benefits of them being a machine.
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Speech technology designers often talk about the concept of "humanness." Recent developments in artificial voice development have resulted in these systems' voices blurring the line between human and machine, sounding increasingly humanlike. There have also been efforts to make the language of these i