I was shocked when I couldn’t switch back to Google Assistant today. I had tried out gemini for months a while back, and it does not control my phone well. I don’t need advanced AI to remind me to move the laundry in two hours or remind me of my mother’s birthday each year. Or to queue up a specific song on spotify. Also, advanced AI is cumbersome at those things. It’s a real bummer.
I’m assuming this is a way to artificially inflate user numbers to shareholders.
This sucks.
If you can’t understand the utility of being able to speak commands to an assistant for simple tasks as opposed to unlocking phone and thumbing on a screen, context switching several times throughout the process, that is totally fine. You’re probably a smart cookie.
But you have to understand that your experience is so divorced from your fellow man that you should think of yourself as a bit of an alien and the exception. STT voice command interface is incredibly useful, and this is coming from someone who doesn’t use it for privacy reasons either.
It’s undeniably an incredibly efficient user input paradigm, much more so than thumbing on a screen in the opinion of many.
Smart cookies should be advocating for open / local solutions for STT voice interfaces, not denying their proven utility altogether with flippancy.
This wasn’t necessary. They were just providing a low tech reliable solution that works well also. I don’t see that they were shitting on anyone else’s systems for staying organized.
Well said. I don’t necessary think my smartphone is “low tech”, I mean it does all kinds of things and my calendars sync to my computer, my partner, they fetch the holidays etc… But it’s a different user interface. And some people like speech commands better. Maybe they’re juggling 3 kids, cooking dinner and there’s just no way to grab the phone and type something in. That’s perfectly valid.
Bit of a shame most of these voice assistants come with several downsides. I’m experimenting with the Home Assistant voice assistant. That’s nice and can run entirely at home. It’s still mostly for tinkerers, though. And not really suited for tasks like remind me of the dog meds. I guess it could do it if connected to more AI… But then I’m not going to. And I think that’s the beauty of open-source solutions, I can strike whatever balance I want. Maybe sometime soon it’ll be ready for mainstream use and help with issues like OP lined out.