[enobrev]

> Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri were thought to be good at launch

In my own experience, Alexa and Google's query pucks were improving for a short time, and then got considerably worse, losing features every month until they basically stopped understanding or responding to anything but the simplest requests.

A couple months after released, they expanded android auto with the same abilities, so I could "ok google" in my car and ask for the answer to just about any question, or to adjust the temp in my house, or ask it to play just about any obscure album / artist. It improved over about 6 months and then began to devolve from there. It's not even possible to ask for "[popular artist] radio" anymore in the car nor can I run voice queries at all that aren't map-specific.

Not sure what happened there, but in my mind they failed miserably. I still like Android auto, but my google and alexa pucks are all in a pile in some cabinet around here somewhere.

[tastysandwich]

> In my own experience, Alexa and Google's query pucks were improving for a short time, and then got considerably worse, losing features every month until they basically stopped understanding or responding to anything but the simplest requests.

Yes!! I thought it was just me and my Australian accent.

And the commands are super limited. I wonder to what extent that's also because third-party companies aren't integrating properly? Eg, my Roborock has clearly labeled rooms, but I can't say "hey Google, start vacuuming the kitchen". Is that Google's fault, or Roborock's?

Also, I can't seem to chain commands, eg "hey Google, set the lights to red and 10% brightness". I have to say them separately. That seems like a Google thing to me.

[imp0cat]

FWIWm, Alexa and Roomba seem to work fine together, so I guess it depends on the quality of Roborock's intergration.

[worthless-trash]

There was a period of 2 months when googles third party integration wouldnt let you add new items to an existing registered account.

So dumb.

[modeless]

Years ago, before it was Google Assistant, my phone could hear me say OK Google while sitting in a cupholder driving down the road. Now my phone frequently fails to respond when I'm holding it near my face in a silent room. But somehow it still has more false positive activations. And they haven't added a single new feature I actually find useful in that entire time.

[petee]

Sometimes retraining the voice model improves the response.

Personally, I also encounter clogged mic ports, which kills my OK google distance

[modeless]

I've tried retaining several times. It's certainly possible that my newer phones have poorly designed microphones. But all of the phones in question were Nexus/Pixel so it would still be Google's fault.

[martin_drapeau]

I've been so disapointed with Siri. First, the latency is just plain aweful. Second, I tried a number of times to ask it not to interrupt me with notifications but alas, it failed to understand. I had to find the setting and toggle it myself.

Apple has a lot of work to improve that. A lot of work...

[happymellon]

There is also the crap around regions. I'm in the UK, but if I set my assistant to the the US suddenly it can understand a lot more and perform a lot more tasks.

Although while it understands a lot more, it's still getting worse.

Same about my Fitbit Versa. It was great, and now Google removes features.

At this point I would just prefer it if they let me just replace the firmware with one of the opensource projects. Can I replace my Alexa or Google puck firmware with something better?

[enobrev]

This is why I've kept my pucks. I'm hoping for a hackaday post or something where someone installs their own _something_ on them. They have great mics and the speakers are decent. Wouldn't mind using them as an interface to Mycroft or something.

[happymellon]

Unfortunately Mycroft is dead.

Maybe Rhasspy with Home Assistant will save us from this mess.

[rhaway84773]

I’m not sure Siri ever got as good as the original Siri app that Apple bought. Maybe the custom triggers are an advancement but it has spent most of its life chasing the original Siri.

[Gigachad]

Siri is such a disappointment. It fails on things that seem like they should be trivial like unit conversions. Pretty much only good for setting timers and making phone calls now.

[unholythree]

I wonder if they nerfed their assistants because paths that are too autonomous too easily wander into PR nightmares. Carefully curated results and behavior isn't going to spontaneously generate content actual human beings would consider offensive or prejudiced. People are pretty eager to pull out their pitchforks, and "Big Tech Builds Vile Hate Bot" make a excellent click-bate headline every time.

[abdulhaq]

The production of prejudiced content by "AI"s is a real issue and not just a problem of click-bait headlines