The intelligent personal assistant has its origins in a military artificial intelligence project called CALO, for its acronym in English "cognitive assistant that learns and organizes." Adam Cheyer, a manager of the CALO project, took some people from SRI International's artificial intelligence center and formed a team to begin the creation of Siri. This was the first known intelligent personal assistant.

The first tool to enable digital speech recognition was the IBM Shoebox), introduced to the general public during the 1962 Seattle World's Fair, following its initial market release in 1961. This early computer, developed almost 20 years before the introduction of the first IBM Personal Computer in 1981, was capable of recognizing sixteen spoken words and the digits 0 to 9. The next milestone in the development of speech recognition technology was achieved in the 1960s. 1970 at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with the substantive support of the United States Department of Defense and its agency DARPA. Their Harpy tool mastered a thousand words, similar to the vocabulary of a three-year-old child. About ten years later, the same group of scientists developed a system that could not only analyze individual words but entire sequences of words enabled by the hidden Markov model.[8] Thus, the first virtual assistants, which applied speech recognition software. speech were answering machines and digital dictaphone medical software.[9]​ In the 1990s, digital voice recognition technology became a feature of personal computers from Microsoft, IBM, Philips and Lernout & Hauspie fighting for customers. Much later the market launch of the first IBM Simon smartphone in 1994 laid the foundation for intelligent virtual assistants as we know them today.[10]​ The first digital virtual assistant installed on a phone. smart was Siri, which was introduced as a feature of the iPhone 4S on October 14, 2011.[10] Apple Inc. developed Siri following its 2010 acquisition of Siri Inc.), a spin-off of SRI International, which is a research institute funded by DARPA and the United States Department of Defense.

As part of the history of virtual assistants, we also have chatterbots or conversational agents that emerged on some Internet pages in the 90s and early 2000s, which sought interaction with the user of the page by simulating having a conversation with them, in order to help them in their searches in an automated way.[11]​ The first chatterbots were very limited and did not always understand human instructions. They were inserted in web pages and worked through text.[12] Their operation was based on the prior recording of automated responses that were offered to the user after the recognition of certain keywords.

They have five major advantages: Efficiency, improvement of online customer satisfaction, cost optimization, continuous machine learning and detection of market trends and needs.[13]​.

Depending on the nature of the interaction between the user and the virtual assistant, virtual assistants can be found that work through text, voice or image exchange. We further separate them into general-purpose virtual assistants or domain-specific virtual assistants depending on the degree of complexity of the task they perform.[14]​.

Virtual assistants do the work through:.

Some virtual assistants are accessible through multiple methods, such as Google Assistant via chat in the Google Allo app and via voice on Google Home smart speakers.

Virtual assistants use natural language processing (NLP) to combine user text or voice input with executable commands. Many continually learn using artificial intelligence techniques, including machine learning.

Virtual assistants can be integrated into various types of platforms or, in the case of some such as Amazon Alexa, through several of them:

Contenido

Los asistentes virtuales pueden proporcionar una amplia variedad de servicios, incluyendo:[26]​.

Customer service

A virtual assistant can work with a company's customer service team to provide 24/7 customer support.[28]​[29]​ Provides fast response time, which improves customer service.

Conversational commerce

Conversational commerce is e-commerce that uses various messaging tools, including voice assistants,[30]​ as well as live chat on e-commerce websites, live chat on messaging apps such as WeChat, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp[31]​, and chatbots on messaging apps or websites.[32]​.

Virtual assistants are considered emerging technologies, that is, products of scientific innovation and advancement that impact the lifestyle of their users; it is expected that this impact will be positive and generate well-being. Virtual assistants can be applied in different fields.[33]​.

Education is one of the fields in which virtual assistants can be used, for teaching-learning processes, whether in person or virtual, even more so at this time when information and communication technologies are being increasingly used to support educational work. Humans can interact with virtual assistants through our voice to wait for a response or the execution of an order from the virtual assistants.[33]​.

Among the advantages of using virtual assistants in education are students' preference and acceptance of voice interaction, as it is easier than text interaction; You can interact as if you were another person without having to use a computer, phone or tablet "Tablet (computer)").[34]​.

According to the 2019 Horizon Report on higher education, virtual assistants will have great utility and a high potential for long-term impact in higher education.[33]​.

In 2020, an article was published that describes an investigation into the usefulness and effectiveness of virtual assistants in secondary education.[35]​ In this investigation, the ability of the Amazon Echo and Google Nest mini assistants to resolve doubts and provide information in the classroom was evaluated, which were evaluated through a series of questions asked orally by the students of the Technology subject to the virtual assistants. When evaluating the virtual assistants, none of the assistants could answer more than 33 of the 58 questions posed.[35]​.

Despite this, the use of virtual assistants in the classroom has a series of very beneficial applications, as is the case of:[36]​.

Google Assistant

Google Assistant's privacy policy states that it does not store audio data without the user's permission, but it may save conversation transcripts to personalize the experience.[37]​ Personalization can be disabled in settings. If the user wants Google Assistant to save audio data, they can go to Voice and Audio Activity (VAA) and activate the feature.

Amazon Alexa

The privacy policy for Amazon's virtual assistant, Alexa, states that it only listens to conversations when its start word is used (e.g. Alexa, Amazon, Echo).[38]​ The software begins recording the conversation when the start word is spoken and stops recording after 8 seconds of silence.

Apple Siri

Apple claims it does not record audio to enhance Siri. Instead, use transcripts. Transcript data is only sent if it is considered important for analysis. Users can opt out at any time if they do not want Siri to send transcripts to the cloud.[39]​.

The intelligent personal assistant has its origins in a military artificial intelligence project called CALO, for its acronym in English "cognitive assistant that learns and organizes." Adam Cheyer, a manager of the CALO project, took some people from SRI International's artificial intelligence center and formed a team to begin the creation of Siri. This was the first known intelligent personal assistant.

The first tool to enable digital speech recognition was the IBM Shoebox), introduced to the general public during the 1962 Seattle World's Fair, following its initial market release in 1961. This early computer, developed almost 20 years before the introduction of the first IBM Personal Computer in 1981, was capable of recognizing sixteen spoken words and the digits 0 to 9. The next milestone in the development of speech recognition technology was achieved in the 1960s. 1970 at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with the substantive support of the United States Department of Defense and its agency DARPA. Their Harpy tool mastered a thousand words, similar to the vocabulary of a three-year-old child. About ten years later, the same group of scientists developed a system that could not only analyze individual words but entire sequences of words enabled by the hidden Markov model.[8] Thus, the first virtual assistants, which applied speech recognition software. speech were answering machines and digital dictaphone medical software.[9]​ In the 1990s, digital voice recognition technology became a feature of personal computers from Microsoft, IBM, Philips and Lernout & Hauspie fighting for customers. Much later the market launch of the first IBM Simon smartphone in 1994 laid the foundation for intelligent virtual assistants as we know them today.[10]​ The first digital virtual assistant installed on a phone. smart was Siri, which was introduced as a feature of the iPhone 4S on October 14, 2011.[10] Apple Inc. developed Siri following its 2010 acquisition of Siri Inc.), a spin-off of SRI International, which is a research institute funded by DARPA and the United States Department of Defense.

As part of the history of virtual assistants, we also have chatterbots or conversational agents that emerged on some Internet pages in the 90s and early 2000s, which sought interaction with the user of the page by simulating having a conversation with them, in order to help them in their searches in an automated way.[11]​ The first chatterbots were very limited and did not always understand human instructions. They were inserted in web pages and worked through text.[12] Their operation was based on the prior recording of automated responses that were offered to the user after the recognition of certain keywords.

They have five major advantages: Efficiency, improvement of online customer satisfaction, cost optimization, continuous machine learning and detection of market trends and needs.[13]​.

Depending on the nature of the interaction between the user and the virtual assistant, virtual assistants can be found that work through text, voice or image exchange. We further separate them into general-purpose virtual assistants or domain-specific virtual assistants depending on the degree of complexity of the task they perform.[14]​.

Virtual assistants do the work through:.

Some virtual assistants are accessible through multiple methods, such as Google Assistant via chat in the Google Allo app and via voice on Google Home smart speakers.

Virtual assistants use natural language processing (NLP) to combine user text or voice input with executable commands. Many continually learn using artificial intelligence techniques, including machine learning.

Virtual assistants can be integrated into various types of platforms or, in the case of some such as Amazon Alexa, through several of them:

Contenido

Los asistentes virtuales pueden proporcionar una amplia variedad de servicios, incluyendo:[26]​.

Customer service

A virtual assistant can work with a company's customer service team to provide 24/7 customer support.[28]​[29]​ Provides fast response time, which improves customer service.

Conversational commerce

Conversational commerce is e-commerce that uses various messaging tools, including voice assistants,[30]​ as well as live chat on e-commerce websites, live chat on messaging apps such as WeChat, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp[31]​, and chatbots on messaging apps or websites.[32]​.

Virtual assistants are considered emerging technologies, that is, products of scientific innovation and advancement that impact the lifestyle of their users; it is expected that this impact will be positive and generate well-being. Virtual assistants can be applied in different fields.[33]​.

Education is one of the fields in which virtual assistants can be used, for teaching-learning processes, whether in person or virtual, even more so at this time when information and communication technologies are being increasingly used to support educational work. Humans can interact with virtual assistants through our voice to wait for a response or the execution of an order from the virtual assistants.[33]​.

Among the advantages of using virtual assistants in education are students' preference and acceptance of voice interaction, as it is easier than text interaction; You can interact as if you were another person without having to use a computer, phone or tablet "Tablet (computer)").[34]​.

According to the 2019 Horizon Report on higher education, virtual assistants will have great utility and a high potential for long-term impact in higher education.[33]​.

In 2020, an article was published that describes an investigation into the usefulness and effectiveness of virtual assistants in secondary education.[35]​ In this investigation, the ability of the Amazon Echo and Google Nest mini assistants to resolve doubts and provide information in the classroom was evaluated, which were evaluated through a series of questions asked orally by the students of the Technology subject to the virtual assistants. When evaluating the virtual assistants, none of the assistants could answer more than 33 of the 58 questions posed.[35]​.

Despite this, the use of virtual assistants in the classroom has a series of very beneficial applications, as is the case of:[36]​.

Google Assistant

Google Assistant's privacy policy states that it does not store audio data without the user's permission, but it may save conversation transcripts to personalize the experience.[37]​ Personalization can be disabled in settings. If the user wants Google Assistant to save audio data, they can go to Voice and Audio Activity (VAA) and activate the feature.

Amazon Alexa

The privacy policy for Amazon's virtual assistant, Alexa, states that it only listens to conversations when its start word is used (e.g. Alexa, Amazon, Echo).[38]​ The software begins recording the conversation when the start word is spoken and stops recording after 8 seconds of silence.

Apple Siri

Apple claims it does not record audio to enhance Siri. Instead, use transcripts. Transcript data is only sent if it is considered important for analysis. Users can opt out at any time if they do not want Siri to send transcripts to the cloud.[39]​.