I love a disembodied voice just as much as the next person, but we’re going a little bit too far with voice assistants aren’t we?
Earlier today Optus announced Call Effects which effectively lets Optus’ new voice assistant join your phone calls, with a handful of ‘voice skills’. Triggered by “Hey Optus” you can consult a crystal ball, flip a coin, play a round of 21 questions, or spin a roulette wheel to help you pick dinner. For now it's a quirky feature, but has the potential to be genuinely useful as the skillset develops.
The unnamed Optus voice assistant joins an ever-growing rank of VAs packaged with tech. It feels like every new piece of hardware that enters my home comes with its own hyper-specific, voice-controlled personality. If you say the word “hey” in my house, you can almost feel the electric anticipation in the air from the devices gathered.
More often than not, that “hey” is followed by “Siri” despite the multitude of other VAs I could address. The problem with the other assistants isn’t how effective they are - most work well enough - or even a personal preference, its simply that they only serve one useful purpose. Bixby is the easiest way to use Power Freeze on the Samsung Family Hub fridge, Yiko tries its best to release the Deebot, and realistically Siri is a glorified lightswitch, timer, and white noise machine.
It is all a bit excessive.
Somewhere along the way it seems that manufacturers have decided against integrating with existing VAs like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant, in turn making things harder for consumers. Voice assistants are supposed to streamline processes, but when you’re met with an audience of up-pricked virtual ears with every “hey”, that stream is more of a mess.
Anula Wiwatowska
Offsite Editorial Lead | Instagram
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