Assistant Showdown! How do Siri, Cortana, Google Assistant, and Alexa stack up today?

A funny thing happened the other day. I was sitting at my computer – a Dell XPS 13 – working my day job, which is for an iOS app developer. I carry an Android phone and I was sitting in the room where I keep my Echo Dot. I was sitting in a room with four digit assistants within earshot – Cortana, Siri, Google, and Amazon. So I decided to conduct a little experiment – and assistant showdown , if you will – as illustrated in these tweets.

Who won the Stanley Cup in 2016? Siri: The Penguins, beating the Sharks, this was the score of the last game Google: The Penguins (1/2)

— Adam Doud (@DeadTechnology) January 13, 2017

Who won the Stanley Cup in 2016? Cortana: Here were the hockey scores last night. Alexa: I don’t have the answer to that question.

— Adam Doud (@DeadTechnology) January 13, 2017

As you can see, the results from my experiment were quite varied, plus I legitimately couldn’t remember who won the Cup, so win-win right? But seeing these results made me wonder where else digital assistants might vary in their responses. So, I called up the team and gave them each one question to ask. For the test, I used an iPad, Nexus 6P, Google Home, Kindle Fire, and the aforementioned Dell XPS 13 and Amazon Echo Dot. In some cases, having a screen made a difference. Here were the results:

Adam Lein

Sing me a song.

Siri – “You know I can’t sing, Adam.”
Cortana – *singing* “Oh, he floats through the air with the greatest of ease, this daring young man on the flying trapeze.”
Google Home – *singing* “I can sing. I can sing a song. I’ll keep it simple, it won’t last very long.”
Google Phone – Search result of a Youtube video called “Sing me a song”
Alexa (Kindle and Echo) – “Who me? I couldn’t. I…hit it! *band plays* When my wifi left me, and I’m out in the rain. Those last few answers were hard to obtain. But that’s no excuse to put me on mute. Like a good cowgirl, I’ll up and reboot. It’s raining in the cloud and I ain’t proud. I’ll answer in the morning, answer in the evening when you’re around. I’ll answer in the morning, answer in the evening, when you’re around.”

Results – Alexa won this contest handily. Not only did the assistant sing the same song on both devices, but a full band accompanied it. Here’s a non-Pocketnow YouTube video of it. I’m talking studio time. The other three assistants recognized the command to sing a song, and the Nexus 6P just showed me a YouTube video. Amazon was clearly waiting for someone to ask this question.

Adrian Diaconescu

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Siri – “To get to the next question. Next question.”
Cortana – “I thought you’d never ask, so I’ve never thought about it.”
Google Home – “There are millions of search for that which is a lot of chickens. You’d [...]

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from Pocketnow http://pocketnow.com/2017/01/19/assistant-showdown