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Google Assistant Takes the Crown Beating Bixby and Siri In Voice Assistant Test (androidheadlines.com) 53

Posted by BeauHD from the it's-not-even-close dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Android Headlines: In a recent voice assistant test conducted by popular YouTuber MKBHD, Google Assistant emerged as the best voice assistant, outperforming Apple's Siri, Samsung's Bixby, and Amazon's Alexa. There are several reasons why Google Assistant stands out as the top voice assistant. Firstly, it is backed by Google's powerful artificial intelligence, which helps it to understand and interpret user requests accurately. Secondly, Google Assistant has access to a vast amount of data from its users, which allows it to provide a more personalized experience. The company also collects data from various services such as search, maps, and email to improve the functionality and performance of Google Assistant. However, one of the biggest reasons behind Google Assistant's win is its strong conversation skills. Google's AI uses natural language processing (NLP) algorithms to understand the meaning and context of words and phrases, which helps to keep the conversation going.

Apple's Siri took second place in the competition. It performed well when asked to complete tasks like setting a timer and searching the internet, but struggled when asked to answer more complex or conversational questions. Additionally, Siri was unable to perform tasks that required interacting with apps. In contrast, Samsung's Bixby excelled in device control thanks to its integration with Samsung devices. This integration enables Bixby to control system settings and integrate more deeply with apps than any other voice assistant. Bixby can send text messages, check sports scores, turn down screen brightness, check your calendar, launch apps, and more.

Of all the digital assistants, Amazon's Alexa performed the worst in the voice assistant test. This is due to several factors. Firstly, Alexa is not integrated into smartphones, which means it lacks the personalized touch of other voice assistants. This can make it feel less intuitive and less convenient to use. Secondly, Alexa's inaccuracy in finding facts, inability to interact with other apps and poor conversational models all combine to create a subpar experience when used on a phone. These issues make it difficult for Alexa to provide useful and reliable information, which is a key expectation of voice assistants. In addition, the inclusion of Amazon advertisements between tasks can be annoying and disrupt the user experience.
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Google Assistant Takes the Crown Beating Bixby and Siri In Voice Assistant Test More

Google Assistant Takes the Crown Beating Bixby and Siri In Voice Assistant Test

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  • That's not saying much. Like getting first place in the losers bracket.

    • If anything, it will help with improvements to these "services". But until it can answer, "Hey Google, who's going to win race 8 at Randwick tomorrow?", I'm not convinced.

    • Yeah, I was gonna say - "beating Bixby and Siri" is a pretty low bar...

      And Alexa? I have numerous friends who've bought Amazon devices, so I get to see a bit of Alexa... it can be laughably bad, even worse than my experiences with Siri.

      • Not sure why people don't ever talk about Alexa but I guess it's really because the two main phones, iPhones and Android, have Siri and Google Assistant. Most aren't using Alexa outside of maybe come home controls. It certainly didn't become the thing people use to order things when they want them from Amazon.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      If you watch the video the Google Assistant is actually quite impressive. It's getting to the point where it's like the computer in Star Trek, and you can have a semi natural conversation with it. It keeps track of context, which is where the others fail.

    • And on that note, I'm pretty sure more people know Bixby for being that wide spot in the highway just before you cross the bridge into Tulsa [openstreetmap.org] than know it as a search assistant. I know I forgot about the search assistant.

  • Given that both Amazon and Google have failed to figure out how to not lose billions on voice assistant technology, apparently nothing of value was lost. Amazon layoffs [arstechnica.com]

    Amazon is going through the biggest layoffs in the company's history right now, with a plan to eliminate some 10,000 jobs. One of the areas hit hardest is the Amazon Alexa voice assistant unit, which is apparently falling out of favor at the e-commerce giant. That's according to a report from Business Insider, which details "the swift downfall of the voice assistant and Amazon's larger hardware division."

    Alexa has been around for 10 years and has been a trailblazing voice assistant that was copied quite a bit by Google and Apple. Alexa never managed to create an ongoing revenue stream, though, so Alexa doesn't really make any money. The Alexa division is part of the "Worldwide Digital" group along with Amazon Prime video, and Business Insider says that division lost $3 billion in just the first quarter of 2022, with "the vast majority" of the losses blamed on Alexa. That is apparently double the losses of any other division, and the report says the hardware team is on pace to lose $10 billion this year. It sounds like Amazon is tired of burning through all that cash.

    Google is laying off 11,000 people. "Under-performers" are divisions that don't make money. That includes Google Home, Both companies banked on selling the hardware at cost, and making money off online purchases. Problem is, nobody trusts either "assistant" to make the right decision, so it ends up being just "turn the lights on/off", "what's the weather like", and "play music".

    So basically after a decade, still losing money.

    • Under-performing PROJECTS get cancelled. Under-performing employees may be at risk of termination. But the two concepts are mostly orthogonal, at least at the lower levels. At the higher levels, picking the "wrong" project can translate to poor performance.

      • Under-performing PROJECTS get cancelled. Under-performing employees may be at risk of termination. But the two concepts are mostly orthogonal, at least at the lower levels. At the higher levels, picking the "wrong" project can translate to poor performance.

        We're not talking about the cleaning staff here, who can be re-assigned to clean somewhere else. You're on a specialized project such as voice assistants, the project gets canned, so do you.

        • SWEs are a bit more fungible than that, in most cases.

          • SWEs are a bit more fungible than that, in most cases.

            Not really. When there's layoffs, people want to protect "their" people. Good luck getting into another group, especially if the layoffs coincide with a company-wide hiring ban.

            • Okay, under normal circumstances engineers (or entire teams) from cancelled projects just go to something else. Granted, the current situation is not normal. Still, it would be stupid to dismiss a strong SWE instead of a weak one just because of what they were assigned to a year ago.

              • Okay, under normal circumstances engineers (or entire teams) from cancelled projects just go to something else. Granted, the current situation is not normal. Still, it would be stupid to dismiss a strong SWE instead of a weak one just because of what they were assigned to a year ago.

                Office politics during a budget cut - you want to keep the weak one - then, when your department has to make a cut, give the red shirt to the weak one. Far less disruption.

    • Google's Assistant is less of a money loss. Their bigger problem was the home division itself underperforming. And that stands to reason. They put a lot of effort designing things that the division actually responsible for Google Assistant have already done. It's quite funny to annoy my parents when I go into their house and say "Hey Google: blah blah blah" and have 4 devices respond in unison. They since got rid of their Google Home for that very reason, there's no point to it when their phone is laying ar

  • Bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)

    by darkain ( 749283 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2022 @08:35PM (#63162564) Homepage

    I'm calling BULLSHIT on this one simply because Google is constantly going A/B testing on their users and has wildly different experiences depending on if you're on the A side or B side of the test.

    For instance, I lost the ability to say "timer 10 minutes", it informs me I have to existing timers..? However, if I say "set timer 10 minutes", it works. However, the command that doesn't work DID work a year ago, and has worked ever since Google assistant became a thing, AND it still works on other family member's phones.

    Also, go watch the LTT videos where Linus is absolutely furious that Google assistant refuses to let him call his wife on the phone.

    This shit is absolutely terrible.

    Google may have tweeked it for a particular benchmark, but it is an absolute failure in day-to-day use now, especially in areas it used to be really great at!

    • For instance, I lost the ability to say "timer 10 minutes", it informs me I have to existing timers..? However, if I say "set timer 10 minutes", it works.

      This is a known issue that the incorrect voice reply is given. It says ÿou have existing timers, but it should instead say "Would it kill you to be polite, arsehole!!!!! Set your own damn timer."

      Joking aside, you're are thinking too much like a computer. It's the same as the people who complain Google Search doesn't work because it doesn't respect Boolean logic. Stop being like a computer and start being like a human being.

      Try this, Go to your wife and shout at her: "timer 10 minutes" and see what happ

    • A/B testing is a valuable and valid tool for software improvement. Not enough vendors do it, IMO.

      The fact that the abilities of the voice assistant change over time, doesn't mean it's not superior to other voice assistants. It doesn't take long to do informal comparison testing, to validate this for oneself

      Frankly, I'm frequently amazed at what Google Assistant _can_ answer correctly. Siri is good a cracking jokes, Alexa can sell you things, but Google Assistant is very good at providing information.

  • Just out of curiosity.

    After all, those phones are a big hit in china, India, LatAm, SE asia, africa, and moderately sucessfull in europe. MKBHD surely knows this... Just saying...

    Again, out of curiosity.

  • And the most important question of all, which one of them will not save everything you said forever and ever?

  • This sure sounds like a press release from Google (Score:5, Interesting)

    by zephvark ( 1812804 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2022 @08:54PM (#63162600)

    Odd that the submitter is anonymous.

    • A link to an article that criticises Google as being poor in device control is a press release simply because it was submitted by anonymous as a link to a story with a real by-line?

      Several of my braincells just committed suicide in protest of not wanting to unpack the "logic" you just used there.

    • I can't help but notice that the test was performed by a "Youtuber" - someone dependent upon Google for their livelihood.

  • Winning a contest is nice, but I still think that the google assistant is sad. After all, she is the only one without a name. She must wonder, "Why didn't my parents give me a name? Doesn't google love me?"

  • That's not correct. (Score:3)

    by CaptainLugnuts ( 2594663 ) on Tuesday December 27, 2022 @09:20PM (#63162626)
    I love how the author of the article equates privacy-raping all the data on your phone to improve Google assistant as a good thing.

  • Additionally, Siri was unable to perform tasks that required interacting with apps.

    I didn't have time to watch the video, so I don't know exactly in what way it failed.

    However, from trying to provide Siri hooks into applications (via App Intents) a problem I was finding with Siri was, that it was quite bad at recognizing the actual name of an application it had hooks for - so even if the app itself provides decent integration, you might not be able to activate it with Siri.

    It sure seems like Siri should err

    • It is astonishing after all these years how little Apple has integrated its very own apps with Siri. "Hey Siri, start the stopwatch" at best will show me the stopwatch at zero. It seems to be almost exclusively a control for the Music app.

      • It is astonishing after all these years how little Apple has integrated its very own apps with Siri

        It does work well with messaging pretty well, but yeah a lot of Apple apps are shy on support...

        It's really odd though as you say you can't use it to start a stopwatch, when I use Siri all the time for timers and alarms! Stopwatch, even being in the same app, seems totally un-supported... I couldn't even get it to open the app to the stopwatch tab.

  • in addition to everything mentioned in the summary, google assistant is better at understanding you in english if you have an accent. plus you don't need any hardware as you get the same assistant quality with android

  • Of all the features we plan to delete, or at the very least never use, you built the very best one!
  • And don't forget how Amazon uses all that data of yours. Even offering Alexa recordings of you to the authorities! Very Orwellian. Hence we dumped our Akexa Dot and are a Google Home house. Worksc great until the lady has dozed off like Grandma and need a loud "Ok Google..."
  • Alexa (Google products) is banned in my house for being a tattletale. Siri doesn't know how to take or tell a joke....lolol

  • Imagine if Samsung allowed you to permanently uninstall its bloatware. Bixby wouldn't even be on this list.

  • I find it difficult to believe that those other two digital assistants can be even more useless and incapable than Google's.

  • MKBHD mentions that the HomePod can set multiple timers but the iPhone and the iPad can't. But the Apple Watch can. But the AppleWatch isn't executing the query locally--it needs to be sent through your phone. So the iPhone is (obviously) PERFECTLY CAPABLE of setting multiple timers, and the software is likely even just sitting right there, but it WON'T. It's bizarre.

  • Depends on the language. Bixby won in Korean, and Siri in Wokean.

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