Tech Trends in Practice

TREND 11Voice Interfaces and Chatbots

The One-Sentence Definition

Voice interfaces and chatbots are computer programs that allow humans to converse and interact with computers through either spoken commands or written text.

What Are Voice Interfaces and Chatbots?

Computer programs that simulate human conversation have, within the space of just a few years, rocketed into everyday use. Both voice interfaces and chatbots work in a similar way, using artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning (Trend 1), Big Data (Trend 4), and natural language processing and natural language generation (Trend 10) to both understand and respond to human speech. Although they’re underpinned by the same technologies, voice interfaces (including digital assistants like Siri and smart speakers like Amazon’s Alexa) and chatbots interact with users in slightly different ways. Voice interfaces respond to spoken language commands (which is really useful for those languages that are easier to speak than type – like Chinese – or when the user is unable to type), while chatbots interact with people through a written chat interface, such as Facebook Messenger or a web-based application. In both cases, the computer uses natural language processing to understand the text, and then analyzes the text using AI and deep learning algorithms to determine the best response.

Voice interface tools in particular have proven massively popular with consumers, particularly when it comes to smart speakers. In the United ...