Virtual Assistants
Amazon Alexa
Amazon Alexa is a cloud-based virtual assistant developed by Amazon, first introduced with the Amazon Echo smart speaker in November 2014. It provides voice-driven control for information retrieval, media playback, communications, shopping, and smart-home automation, and is embedded in Amazon’s Echo devices and many third‑party products via the Alexa Voice Service. Since 2025, Amazon has offered Alexa+, a generative‑AI–enhanced version of the assistant that adds more conversational and task‑orchestrating abilities.
Siri
Siri is Apple’s voice-based virtual assistant, introduced in October 2011 with the iPhone 4S after Apple acquired the startup Siri, Inc. in April 2010. Built into Apple’s operating systems and devices, Siri uses speech recognition, natural language understanding, and Apple’s privacy-focused architecture to answer questions and take actions. Since 2024, Apple has been rolling out an upgraded Siri experience as part of Apple Intelligence, with an optional ChatGPT integration and expanded on‑device processing.