Google or Amazon, Apple or Microsoft, the tech giants can collect a lot of data about us and leak it, we all know that. But we are not ready to stop using their products. Voice assistants are one of them.
Ask Siri to tell you a joke or a bedtime story and you won’t feel lonely or bored anymore. If you can't make a decision — ask her to flip a coin. Or add some magic and
use Harry Potter spells instead of commands. And for some people voice assistants make life significantly easier: for example for those who have vision problems.
Voice assistants, in fact, make a good contribution to our comfort. When driving a car, you can manage phone calls, messages, navigation, news, bookings etc. hands-free — you become fantastic at multitasking. In smart homes, you can ask your assistant to open the door or switch on the light. You can create texts more efficiently by dictating them. And you can talk to foreigners without knowing their language.
But convenience has a flip side, and voice assistants are a rather sensitive topic. You either are enthusiastic about them — or fear them and try to avoid them at all costs. And there are reasons why. The focus of big tech corporations is not primarily on voice assistants — so data protection issues are often overlooked.
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