Virtual assistant "Assistant" on your device. Virtual Assistant is a Great Home Business Option

Virtualdigitalassistant is a web service and/or application for smartphones and personal computers, taking on the functions of a personal secretary to optimize daily activities. He is able to plan a schedule, remind about business and meetings, search for the information necessary for the owner: select places for recreation and entertainment, search for and book tickets online, order a taxi. It is also an electronic interlocutor that responds to a voice message. Heself-learning, adjusting to the individual characteristics of a particular person, gives out information, taking into account the context - the location of the user, the scope of his interests, habits.

This is the fundamental difference between virtual digital assistants from personal assistants of previous generations. The latter regularly perform the function of organizers, planning the day and reminding about meetings. But they won't cancel, say, a meeting in Hong Kong if the owner's flight is delayed and he's actually in Moscow. Virtual digital assistants take this into account because they are closely related to location services. In addition, they use all the layers of information about the user available to them.

Virtual Digital Assistant: History of Creation

The independent non-profit research institute SRI International (California, USA), known as a former division of Stanford University, has previously implemented technological innovations such as computer mouse and a prototype of the Internet, in 2005 joined the efforts of researchers with an ambitious goal: to create a digital assistant capable of cognition, learning and systematization. The project was named CALO (Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes) and was part of the PAL (Personalized Assistant that Learns) program - creating artificial intelligence for the needs of the military.

Thus, initially it was a defense order. Researchers came up with ideas and presented prototypes of virtual assistants that meet the task - an unprecedented one. feedback between user and service. Finally, in 2009, the completion of the CALO project was officially announced. With a $150,000,000 investment, the US Army received a digital assistant capable of parsing mail, compiling email content reports, and scheduling meetings and meetings.

Siri: the exemplary virtual digital assistant

Siri, a personal scheduling service for smartphones, is aimed at the mass user. Siri will convert your voice or text message to search query. By given parameters he looks for places of recreation and entertainment, services located near the point where the user is located, and also performs many other functions of a personal secretary - and sometimes he does this with unobtrusive humor embedded in it by the developers. If you ask Siri to find an Italian restaurant with a romantic setting, it will do so based on the user's location and return a list of nearby restaurants that have "romantic setting" in their reviews.

In April 2010, the project was bought by Apple. And starting from iPhone models 4S, the Siri application has become part of his standard software. Since then, the functionality and quality of speech recognition in this virtual digital assistant has improved markedly. Siri has learned to interact with a huge number of applications and services for an even more individual approach to the user. However, obviously not all of them know about the abilities of a personal digital assistant. Two years after the launch of Siri on the iPhone 4S, it turned out that only 15.2% of users Apple smartphones generally trieduse this service .

GoogleNow, Cortana and other competing assistants

On the platform Apple Siri knows no competition. However, in the big digital world, she is not the only one. Let's say there is a Rearden Personal Assistant - - a service from Rearden Commerce, launched in 2008 for corporate clients in the US and UK. It helps to organize a business trip and order all related services, combining disparate information from the websites of travel companies, airports, restaurants, car rentals - and thus helping to plan a schedule and expenses. As it should be for a virtual assistant, the service takes into account the location of the user and, if necessary, makes changes to his schedule, independently notifying partners about rescheduling meetings.

There are also start-up projects, in particular, the Russian ePythia, a geolocation service and a task scheduler for smartphones. The service sends a task reminder to the user when he is in a certain place. The project was launched in 2010 and is currently in open beta testing.

However, the “big three” of virtual digital assistants have already been defined. This, in addition to Siri, Cortana from Microsoft and Google Now from Google.

Cortana for Windows Phone was introduced in April 2014. In essence, it has the same functions as Siri: schedules, reminds, sends messages, recognizes music, searches for the right places nearby. It also responds to voice and text messages. If she is allowed, she will read email, social media posts, contact list to be as useful as possible. All information is stored in a virtual assistant in a notebook, it can be edited, leaving information about important places and people. The fundamental difference between Cortana and Siri is that the service can not only respond to requests, but also make entries on the calendar itself, formulate reminders by analyzing the history of user actions, that is, in fact, predict his requests.

Google's virtual assistant has gone even further in this direction. Google Now. Predictive search is his thing. The company defines app strategy as follows: Google Now finds for you necessary information before you even asked the question. To do this, the service uses all available features: the history of requests, movements, virtual communication. This allows him, say, to offer the user a cozy cafe, as soon as the thought of drinking coffee came to him. Among the advantages of Google Now is a user-friendly interface from a set of cards that is easy to customize to your needs.

Virtual Digital Assistants, Predictive Search, and the Future of SEO

In the competitive struggle of virtual digital assistants, the winners are those that allow you to save more time - the main and most valuable resource of our time. In this way, predictive oriented helpers , look more promising. Their chances of popularity are much higher, because with predictive search, the user does not have to spend a single second formulating a query.

The concern associated with the interference of such a virtual assistant in a person's private life is justified and understandable. However, the savings in time and effort are increasingly pushing people to delegate day-to-day decision-making to new services, voluntarily exposing their personal information to the public. Predictive search tools are taking advantage of this opportunity by constantly increasing the number of applications and sources of information used. It is in the emphasis on the potential for the development of virtual digital assistants is seen today.

For players The industry cannot ignore this trend. The situation when, in fact, not the person himself, but his virtual assistants will begin to send requests and make a choice in favor of a particular product or service, offering the user a ready-made solution, is a matter of the not too distant future. Therefore, it is important to understand the criteria by which these assistants select options. So far, these criteria are not entirely clear, but it is worth thinking about them and trying to find them right now.

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If only you could minimize the risk of your business idea failing before you even get started. Would you take advantage? Of course, the obvious answer is yes, and yet, why?

Choosing a reliable business partner.

Do you need a virtual assistant?

Back in the mid-90s, when I was just starting my career, I got my first experience using the services of a freelancer. One of the most memorable moments occurred during a small discussion with a group led by the writer. I don't remember his name, but I do remember that he referred to his personal assistant. This writer's personal assistant? I didn't really understand why he needed it. Despite the fact that at the time, I was doing fine, I was doing everything, the idea of ​​​​paying someone for work, even part-time, seemed like crazy nonsense, a cheap show off, or, well, a waste of money. .However, over the following years, I increasingly began to hear from my colleagues and acquaintances who referred to their virtual assistants. And now I'm finally starting to realize my mistake, underestimating all the benefits of using a personal assistant. And in the end, I pay for cleaning the house, I pay people for filing tax returns. Why not pay for a virtual assistant?

When to Hire a VA

A Virtual Assistant, or VA for short, is someone who can help with minor tasks such as filling out invoices, managing schedules, and answering emails. emails, compiling texts on a certain topic - all this is done remotely. So when should you hire him? There is no definite answer to this question. Some of the answers I got were talking to a few freelancers who had hired BAs to help them. For Andrey Rotonov, a project manager from Kirov who specializes in handling editorial projects for clients and the National Education Association. The turning point came when he started losing money. “When my mail with orders was so full that I had to cut back on work. A job that I love, I knew it was time to hire an assistant,” Andrey said. For Zhenya Gregina, a B2B marketer based in Izhevsk, it all came down to time management. Zhenya decided that it would be a good idea to stop working until 3 o'clock in the morning. And for Tanya Kaseleva, a writer, editor, trainer in Minsk, her main goal was to eliminate secondary tasks that took up a lot of time so that she could pursue higher goals. People have many points of contact and we are similar to you in many ways. Perhaps you have a child, you are sick, or you are caring for elderly parents - these are just a few of the possible situations where you may need a little outside help.

How much can VA cost

In order for you to make up your mind, you need to know how much VA services cost. According to a review of freelance platforms, VA services are $5-$7 per hour. On a writers forum, they mentioned paying their VAs between $5 and $10 an hour. Gregory pays his VA $15 an hour, but he told me that he has a habit of overpaying when he finds that he really likes the VA's work, as her work is very specialized. His VA usually works about seven hours a week for him, but how many hours your VA will work for you is up to you. The most important thing is to solve some theoretical equations about the benefits and feasibility of using VA, is it possible that you have to charge higher prices for your services to offset the cost of VA? Of course, there is no way to know for sure how BA will affect your work.

Where to look for VA

There is no universal formula for finding a BA, but there are freelance platforms like fl.ru, freelancehant.com, flassist.ru and others that you can check out. One of my friends found her assistant on the pages of one of social networks by searching for profiles offering similar services. She works with a 25-year-old woman from the Baltics who has experience in large publishing companies. "She's coming out of maternity leave this year and she's ready to go back to her full potential as a virtual assistant," she said. “Her skills matched my needs well. She worked 20 hours a week, which is perfect for me, but I would love to go full-time with her next year.” Make sure you are clear about what you want and what your goals are from the start.

The real value of VA

However, if we have something in common, you might be wondering if you are organized enough to be a virtual assistant. With a virtual assistant, you need to be at least organized enough to keep your VA busy. I used to dismiss the idea of ​​collaborating with a virtual assistant, and argued passionately about it. But now I ask myself how much time was lost and how stupid it was not to use it. Having unloaded myself as much as possible from unnecessary routine work, which is not difficult, but takes a lot of time, frees up free time for me that I can use to increase my competitiveness and improve the quality of my services, time that costs much more than I spend on use of VA.

And a reliable accountant for our conditional company. The business got on its feet, in some places it began to grow, new clients come, the mountain is busy, we return home late and irregularly, on weekends we have fun doing tasks that have not been completed during the working week. 1024 cups of espresso and a couple of sleepless nights later, the voices in my head begin to whisper the magic word "delegation". Having overcome severe moral contradictions, about which Maxim Ilyakhov wrote well, the entrepreneur begins to look for a person who will help break out of the routine. Such a person can be a secretary, personal assistant or business assistant.

The market offers a bunch of options, from web services to full-time employees. We did some research and want to talk about popular options that will suit Moscow entrepreneurs ranging from micro to medium-sized businesses. We will try to be objective and not pull the blanket over the Button, although this is not easy.

Online service exchanges

virtual assistant

Slightly more complex tasks will be able to take on the services of virtual assistants, like YourBees or Assistant. These guys will book a hotel, order flowers for a beloved woman, organize a holiday, help find employees, suppliers, contractors, and even real estate. It was not possible to find a clear boundary for the competences of a virtual assistant - he will take on any legitimate assignments that do not require leaving the office. If he can't do it himself, he will help you find a contractor.

Another type of virtual assistant is a concierge service. In essence, this is a premium virtual assistant that will be 146% more courteous, polite and diligent. Such services usually come in addition to high-end brands like Vertu, Visa cards of the Gold level and above, or membership in closed luxury clubs, so not everyone can take communion. We have never encountered such phenomena face to face, but they say that the quality of highest level. Maybe you have had such an experience?

Who will suit

How much is

• From 5,000 rubles per month for a virtual secretary;
• from 500 rubles per hour of virtual assistant;
• the concierge service is priceless.

Links

remote secretary

On the other hand, the secretarial profession does not require the same level of knowledge, skills and abilities that an accountant and a lawyer need. You can hire an acquaintance, a neighbor's daughter, or a second cousin great-nephew. The main thing is responsibility and discipline. It is advisable to conclude a civil law contract in order to avoid legal battles.

Who will suit

How much is

employee in the state

If the secretary works hard and does more than is expected of him, there is a chance to earn the "personal assistant" or "business assistant" achievement. This person is needed not only and not so much to shift papers and press the buttons of the coffee machine. This is the same healthy head on which you can shift problems with the patient, the second memory and the third hand of the entrepreneur.

An assistant with the prefix "personal" is tailored to fulfill the whims of an entrepreneur - order something somewhere, collect information, make an appointment, run away, bring it (the clinical case is perfectly described in the first person). A “business class” assistant is, in fact, a miniature CEO who often knows more about the company's operations than the business owner. He helps to organize business processes, can independently communicate with customers and suppliers, and sometimes even make decisions and give advice to the boss.

This profession is not taught at the university, so it is unlikely that it will be possible to find an out-of-the-box solution. If the level of an accountant and a lawyer can be assessed at least by professional qualities, then a completely different approach is needed to choosing a personal assistant or business assistant. When selecting assistants for Knopka, we use tasks that help assess the horizons, erudition, mobility, ability to interact with people and work with new information. Simply put, you need to look for a person who loves and knows how to study and is ready to work without job descriptions. This is the case when a person should organize the work of his leader, and not vice versa.

Who will suit

How much is

40,000-80,000 rubles per month for a personal assistant / business assistant;

100,000 or more for a “get a pink pony fly to me on a rainbow Falcon 9” class dude.

Links

Where is the Button?

In the course of development, we rethought the role of a business assistant several times. At first, he was perceived as a personal assistant, then as a secretary, but later, when our guys improved a lot, we realized that they do an excellent job with the tasks that a business assistant usually performs. Of course, the button assistant can still book a flight, find a good restaurant in an unfamiliar city, or book a pedicure, but it can do more.

Working in a team with an accountant and a lawyer, our business assistant will help you build business processes up to the launch of a new project or direction. We hire real superheroes, they are constantly learning, working with different businesses and, sometimes, they know something that you do not expect from them. It is unlikely that it will be possible to list everything without inflating the post to an unreadable footcloth, but you can read about a couple of real examples

In another attempt to implement ideas from science fiction films, one by one, tech giants began to work on virtual assistants. At the Google I/O 2016 conference, the company introduced Google Assistant, as well as an analogue of Amazon Echo - Google Home voice assistant.

The last major company to enter the virtual assistant race. Let's see what competitors it has (including among startups).

First, let's remember what Google Now is.

Google/Google Now voice search

Peculiarities: Fast. Extremely accurate when creating routes. It frightens with its awareness of your flights, bookings and other details. with some third party applications: Manage notes, messages and music playback.

Flaws: Sometimes it bothers you with excessive initiative (for example, it shows the results of the games of teams that you are not interested in, or routes home from famous places). Useless to manage smart home". Work on integration with third-party applications seems to have stalled.

Humanity level: Null. Not conducive to communication. It doesn't even have a name other than Google.

Summary: Vast reserves of personal data and access to a search engine should, in theory, make Google an industry leader, but the company hasn't even been able to figure out how to use its advantages and create an assistant that can understand the user. Today Google Now and voice search they compete on equal terms with Siri, but have not yet reached a new level of development.

And now - about competitors.

Apple Siri

What: A voice assistant that can talk to the user and give proactive recommendations. Activated by long pressing the Home button on and iPad. Assistant support has recently appeared on Apple TV and Apple Watch.

Peculiarities: Easy to use on iOS devices. Understands natural speech. Well informed about news, weather, sports, movies, routes and local businesses. Can tell you what to watch on TV. Able to interact with some elements " smart home».

Flaws: Cannot interact with most other applications and services. Works slower than some competitors.

Humanity level: Not able to maintain a full conversation, but at certain points demonstrates his own wisdom. The female voice sounds relatively human.

Flaws: Feels great on Windows - the platform that developers, and perhaps users, are least interested in. Using the assistant on Android and iOS is more difficult, and there are fewer functions.

Humanity level: He loves jokes, especially banal ones. Has a long list of witty answers to common questions at the ready. Can read excerpts from Shakespeare.

Summary: After years of being in the shadow of Siri and Google, Cortana has become a much more interesting chatbot. Microsoft wants to make its voice assistant the core intelligence for all other bots, able to manage your travels, appointments, to-do lists and more, as well as increase integration with other Microsoft products like Office. The company's goal is to create a new shell for post-PC computing, but it's too early to tell if it will succeed or not.

Facebook M

What: Partly driven, partly human, and still in development. M will be a text-based assistant in the Facebook Messenger environment.

Peculiarities: Will try to do whatever you ask.

Flaws: It is not yet a finished product, and will not be for a long time. Available only to a small number of users in San Francisco.

Humanity level: Extremely high, since people will participate in the formation of answers to questions. According to Wired, the company hopes that over time, M will learn from these operators and be able to work more independently.

Summary: On the this moment M is just a little more than just an idea. But given Facebook's interest in chatbots in general, it wouldn't be surprising if M ended up becoming super-intelligent.

X.ai

What: One of the few virtual assistants with only one function. Works only through e-mail, where he can make appointments at your request.

Peculiarities: Knows your schedule and preferences, negotiates with other participants for you.

Peculiarities: Viv promises that their product will be able to understand complex questions, such as: “Will the temperature near the Golden Gate Bridge exceed 20 degrees the day after tomorrow after 5 p.m.?”. Work is underway to ensure compatibility with third-party applications.

Flaws: So far, apart from prepared presentations, there is no evidence that everything works exactly as stated.

Humanity level: Values ​​visual aids and concrete answers more than detailed description. Wit is questionable.

Flaws: Possibilities for integration with third-party applications are limited, and it is impossible to open the service directly on iOS or Android. Requests that the assistant cannot recognize are redirected to Ask.com.

Humanity level: Not conducive to long conversations, but knows how to answer additional questions.

Summary: It appears that the Hound mobile apps are only really there to show off the capabilities of the Houndify service, which SoundHound plans to sell to other companies. If everything works out, we will not even know that we are using it.

Ozlo

What: AI, the main function of which at the moment is the search for cafes, bars and restaurants. Available for a limited number of users.

Peculiarities: Finds and combines data from several sources, including Yelp and Foursquare, and then presents everything in the form of convenient cards. Tries to communicate by asking and answering follow-up questions, such as "what places are open right now?" or “what’s on their menu?”

Flaws: Limited features, unless the creators of Ozlo add new features. When learning, AI is highly dependent on users.

Humanity level: Avoids unnecessary courtesies, only briefly greetings by name.

Summary: Ozlo would be no different from a lot of other chatbots if it didn't have the prospect of building something bigger. The ability to combine data from multiple sources in a single output is unique, but it is not yet clear whether the developers will be able to realize the full potential they claim. In the meantime, Ozlo's business plan is limited to just the application, collecting the data needed for training can be problematic.

SpeakToIt Assistant.ai

What: One of the many copies of Siri. In the app store, searching for Siri returns many similar programs, such as Voice Commands, Voice Secretary, and Assistant.

Peculiarities: Not unlike Siri, but can learn user commands to activate a list of features.

Flaws: Not as useful as the built-in assistant in your smartphone, and not as convenient.

Humanity level: Sounds rather unnatural, but portrays himself as a human assistant whose gender and appearance can be changed.

Summary: Some of these Siri clones look like a relic of the past, when not all iPhone models could work with Apple's proprietary assistant and needed to be replaced. In any case, it seems that their creators are aware that such an approach will not allow them to succeed. For example, SpeakToIt moved on to creating a set of tools that other developers could use to build their own chatbots.

A virtual assistant is software that performs tasks from the user. First similar systems appeared back in the 1980s, but the assistant installed on the very first IBM Watson smartphone, released back in 1994, became the closest. And the very first voice assistant installed on modern smartphone, became Apple's Siri, introduced in October 2011.

Methods of working with virtual assistants:

• Text message. Common when working with chatbots.
• Voice command. As with Siri, and many other modern voice assistants.
• Loading a specific image, as is the case with the latest S8 flagship.

Some virtual assistants offer users several options for working with them at once.. So you can set commands for Google Assistant through the Allo chat, and control your home exercises with your voice through the Google Home speaker. Modern voice assistants use technology to recognize your normal voice, and use machine learning techniques, being artificial intelligence.

The most common voice virtual assistants

Previous generations of virtual assistants had an avatar. Many (but not all) modern assistants also assume their own characters, and their developers endow systems with personalized names. Here are the most common, functional and dynamically developing virtual assistants:

These assistants are mostly compatible with the Internet of things (with the exception of M and Cortana), have an additional mobile app for work and can always be enabled (the exceptions are the same) for quick access to all their functionality.

IoT gadgets for a smart home are created with support for working with such assistants. The choice of a virtual assistant and additional resources for it should be made taking into account the connected devices, because the management of the Internet of Things system is still not perfect. Some gadgets support some systems, others - others. In order not to get confused, it is worth sticking to one system. In any case, until the most universal one finally appeared, which would unite them all.

Devices that support virtual assistants

Virtual assistants can be integrated on different types platforms. Or, as in the case of Amazon Alexa, work on several at once. Often virtual assistants are supported by the following platforms:

The functionality of the virtual assistant will be limited directly to the device and operating system. At the same time, such assistants are developing and becoming multi-platform, making it very easy to switch between different compatible devices.