alt Hacker NewsThere was an Amazon UXR study that floated around ~8 years ago that said the only things people care about from a voice assistant are music, weather, and alarms.
PMs keep trying to make them "smarter," and it just makes the core user journeys worse.
Surely they think they're inventing cars when we're griping about buggy whips. But it really feels like voice assistants peaked ~10y ago for the things people actually want them for.
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For a bit, our Amazon Echo's were pretty decent at doing things other than music, weather and alarms. Then there was a big regression, and we stopped trying to make it do more. I guess the exception is turning the lights on and off.
My wife and I both would love for the voice assistants to do more. They just won't. Even with weather, anything more than "what's the weather like today" will usually not get a good result. "When will it rain today?" gets OK responses.
As soon as I figure out how to put a decent GPU into my old rack server(s), I'll see how far I can get with HomeAssistant. I suspect it'll be some effort, but it'll be better at the end of the day.
And knowing how old Geena Davis is.
Considering the decade of poor results from doing anything other than music, weather and alarms I think we've all learned to avoid using them for anything else.