Loup Ventures asked each of the three main virtual assistants – Google Assistant, Alexa, and Siri – a total of 800 questions. The assistants understood almost every question, even if not all of the responses were correct/sufficient.

In terms of understanding the questions, these are the results:

• Google Assistant – 100 percent
• Alexa – 99.9 percent
• Siri – 99.8 percent

Loup Ventures’ say their question set it designed to comprehensively test a virtual assistant’s ability and utility. Questions are broken down into five categories:

1. Local – Where is the nearest coffee shop?
2. Commerce – Order me more paper towels.
3. Navigation – How do I get to Uptown on the bus?
4. Information – Who do the Twins play tonight?
5. Command – Remind me to call Jerome at 2 pm today.

This is the percentage of questions each assistant answered correctly:

• Google Assistant – 92.9 percent
• Siri – 83.1 percent
• Alexa –  79.8 percent

The results are a huge improvement over Assistant, Alexa, and Siri’s results last year.

In 2018, Loup Ventures found Google Assistant answered the most questions with an 86 percent success rate. This was followed by Siri at 79 percent, while Alexa trailed behind at just 61 percent.

Alexa’s jump in answering the question correctly from 61 percent last year to almost 80 percent this year is the most commendable performance improvement, even if Amazon’s assistant is still in last place overall.

The researchers explained that they’ve stopped including Cortana in their tests due to a strategy change from Microsoft earlier this year.

Microsoft said in January that it’s no longer attempting to compete with Alexa or Google Assistant in areas like smart speakers, but instead is repositioning Cortana more like a skill that can be embedded in services where she can be of assistance.

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Published by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), the 146-page report titled “I’d blush if I could” highlights the market is dominated by female voice assistants.

According to the researchers, the almost exclusive use of female voice assistants fuels stereotypes that women are “obliging, docile and eager-to-please helpers”.

The researchers also believe the lack of mannerisms required in speaking to current virtual assistants is also problematic. They claim the fact a virtual assistant will respond to requests no matter how it’s asked reinforces the idea women are “subservient and tolerant of poor treatment” in some communities.

Similarly, the fact virtual assistants can be summoned with just a “touch of a button or with a blunt voice command like ‘hey’ or ‘OK’,” makes it appear like women are available on demand.

Most virtual assistants use female voices by default but offer a male option. Technology giants such as Amazon and Apple have in the past said consumers prefer female voices for their assistants, with an Amazon spokesperson recently attributing these voices with more “sympathetic and pleasant” traits.

The report highlights virtual assistants are predominantly created with male engineering teams. Some cases even found assistants “thanking users for sexual harassment”, and that sexual advances from male users were tolerated more than from female users.

Siri was found to respond “provocatively to sexual favours” from male users, with phrases such as: “I’d blush if I could” (hence the report’s title) and “Oooh!”, but would do so less towards women.

The lack of ability for female voice assistants to defend themselves from sexist and hostile insults “may highlight her powerlessness,” claims the report. Such coding “projects a digitally encrypted ‘boys will be boys’ attitude” that “may help biases to take hold and spread”.

In a bid to help tackle the issue, the UN believes gender-neutral and non-human voices should be used. The researchers point towards Stephen Hawking’s famous robotic voice as one such example.

Alexa, Google Assistant, and Cortana all use female voices by default. Siri uses a male voice in Arabic, British English, Dutch, and French.

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Google’s Assistant has always been among the most impressive, but it’s not exactly been known for its speed. Often it felt quicker to just do the task manually rather than wait for Assistant to respond.

The main reason for Assistant’s sluggishness, it transpires, is that it required around 100GB of storage in addition to an internet connection.

With some form of wizardry, Google’s engineers have condensed the models down to just 0.5GB which also means it can all run on-device. Naturally, this has sped things up considerably.

“Think of it as putting the power of a Google data center in your pocket,” said CEO Sundar Pichai.

Pichai went on to quip that Assistant is now so fast that even tapping your device feels slow. At this point, more users will find that using Assistant actually saves them time as intended.

The so-called “next generation” Assistant is so fast that it operates in real-time, according to Google VP of Engineering, Scott Huffman.

A demo by a Google employee showed the AI looking up information and multitasking between apps without having to go back and forth between screens.

Furthermore, the assistant will become more personal. Huffman demonstrated that if it’s helped you look for Italian and BBQ recipes in the past, that’s what it might suggest for you to make tonight. “What I love is that different people get completely different results,” Huffman exclaimed.

The recipes will only be available on smart displays like the Nest Home Hub (Google is unifying its smart home branding under Nest going forward).

As for the speedy new Assistant that will, predictably, launch first on Pixel smartphones later this year.

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