It's 2024, why are voice assistants still so buggy?

Question

Still feels like 20% of the time I try to use Siri/Alexa, they hit one of these failure modes:1. Fail to activate2. Fail to respond (just keep listening forever)3. Activate on the wrong device (talking to Siri on Phone, HomePod 2 rooms over responds)4. Fail to access data they should have ("Who is speaking?" or "I'm having trouble...")Thinking over it, I think voice assistants have the most bugs of any technology I use daily.

smt88 · Accepted Answer

It's because they're a cost center. They don't generate revenue for any big tech company. No one makes purchase decisions based on the voice assistant quality.I know a few people who lightly use them for timers or music, but almost no one goes deeper than that.

65 · Answer

I built an Alexa skill at work. It's mostly a ton of edge cases and prompt variations you have to handle. Alexa also has a very short time out, something like 8 seconds, so your skill will time out very easily. Handling state is a whole other fiasco.
Some things are out my control, like if Alexa picks up the skill invocation phrase or parses the response correctly.
I suspect LLMs will help with this. Alexa is already integrating LLMs with their newer skill kits.

diebeforei485 · Answer

For #3 I recommend setting up your phone to respond to "Siri" but Homepod to respond to "Hey Siri".

trav4225 · Answer

Because everything is buggy these days. ;-)

drivingmenuts · Answer

1. Scottish accents ... 2. See #1.