“Alexa, set the alarm for 7 AM tomorrow.”
“Alexa, what’s the weather like today?”
We bet you’ve heard these lines or something similar a dozen times – maybe not. If it’s not Alexa, it is either Google or Siri. And the list of usable AI personal assistants keeps growing daily.
But there’s much more to an AI personal assistant than just asking for changes in the sky. AI writing assistants, for instance, aid users in generating unique and high-quality content, providing feedback on writing style, grammar, and spelling, and offering a suite of tools to help writers write, optimize, and rank their content.
In this article, we will discuss how these intelligent techs have influenced our day-to-day activities and how they are revolutionizing personal and business lives.
For example, FlyMSG an AI writing assistant and text expander, has revolutionized the way sales people engage with today’s modern buyer. Using features like FlyEngage AI reps can write LinkedIn comments in less than 15-seconds where before it would take them 6-12 minutes!
Another sales productivity tool for B2B sales reps includes FlyPosts AI to perform specific tasks like writing a social media post. Sales reps and sales managers clocked in a whooping 32-minute long average to write social post! Now, with the introduction of FlyPosts AI and its user-friendly interface, users can perform tasks or day to day tasks with the writing assistance they need.
What Is An Artificial Intelligent Personal Assistant?
An AI personal assistant is a subset of artificial intelligence tools capable of analyzing textual and voice input through text and voice recognition features, executing specific tasks when assigned, and responding to queries. AI writing assistants, for example, can generate unique and high-quality content, provide feedback on writing style, grammar, and spelling, and offer a suite of tools such as an AI humanizer to help writers optimize and rank their content.
Introducing the concept of daily life, these are intelligent techs built to understand your intent through speech or text and accurately provide a solution systematically.
And, of course, these AI tools are different from static chatbots that are pre-configured to act in a specific, non-progressive pattern. The latter can only respond to queries presented in the format in which it was previously trained.
So, if your screen’s wake-up word is “Put The Screen On”, and you say “Put On The Screen”, you will likely get an error message.
On the other hand, AI personal assistants are dynamic, improve with every bit of data consumed, and can handle a wide variety of voice commands even if they’re not pre-registered in the database. That’s where you find the likes of Alexa, ChatGPT, Vengreso’s FlyMSG, and Google’s Gemini.
Why Are They Called Personal Assistants?
Let’s assume you’re a business owner with many delegated tasks to complete daily.
- There’s a chance you’ll forget to carry out some minor tasks, such as confirming your next appointment, rescheduling a missed meeting, updating team members on current trolls, etc.
- Or you might be too occupied to handle some personal to-dos like checking the weather, standing up to turn off the light, setting a roll of alarms to wake you every Wednesday, etc.
In any of these scenarios, you need something that can effectively help you manage your various tasks. And that’s where AI personal assistants come in. They fill in the gap to handle the various tasks you couldn’t while you focus on the more important to-dos.
Conversational AI Assistants And Natural Language Processing
The biggest flex of AI personal assistants is that they can communicate with you in a language no different from that of a human virtual assistant, says Albert Kim, VP of Talent at Checkr.
“That doesn’t mean we’ve reached a stage where AI outputs are 100% better than human outputs. But an AI personal intelligent virtual assistant can, to some extent, engage you in an intellectual discussion and act as a business buddy when needed, all thanks to natural language processing”, he continues.
Natural Language Processing is a big AI concept that helps trained machines or programs understand human language, analyze it, and even manipulate it to produce a suitable result.
So, suppose you ask Amazon’s Alexa AI assistant or OpenAI’s ChatGPT a question in French. These two can use NLP to break down the language to the nearest cultural nuances before responding likewise.
Beyond the semantics and rules of punctuations, NLP with machine learning algorithms (ML) also helps AI personal assistants comprehend human emotions and sentiments, respond with a fitting context, and build a conversational atmosphere that feels almost entirely human.
How AI Personal Assistants Came To Be
AI assistants have gone mainstream for decades, from when Joseph Weizenbaum developed the first chatbot called ELIZA in 1966 to when Kenneth Colby designed an upgraded version called PARRY in 1972.
However, these bots had limited functionalities and could only reproduce pre-stored information or simulate predetermined instances. Later, in the early 2000s, interactive voice interaction and speech recognition systems were introduced, paving the way for the use of Natural Language Processing in future techs.
Of course, it wasn’t until the 2010s that AI personal assistants became real. Brands like Apple created Siri, Amazon rolled out Alexa, and Google named its own Google Assistant. This marked the beginning of truly smart and highly adaptable AI assistants.
Right now, we have more sophisticated and generative AI personal assistants such as ChatGPT by Open-AI, Claude by Anthropic, and Gemini by Google. And these techs are already finding their way into our devices, software program, home appliances, etc.
Source: ChatGPT
That means you don’t need to tap your screen to set an alarm or manually create and send email content to your next-door neighbor. Your digital butler takes care of it all with just a voice commands.
3 Negative Impacts Of AI Personal Assistants
Just like any other innovation, AI personal assistants are in question over certain concerns which could potentially impact users’ lives negatively. Here are the main 3 negative impacts of an AI personal assistant:
1- Privacy Issues And Security Vulnerabilities
AI virtual assistants are extremely efficient at keeping every word, voice recording, and other interaction in a database for future access. The same goes for your location, browsing history, and other sensitive materials.
This, however, creates a privacy concern as your data could be misused or mishandled by the agency owning the tool, with or without your notice.
There’s also the fear of security breaches. Since these AI tools hold so much valuable information, they automatically become a perfect and constant target for cyber-attacks.
2- High Dependency On Technology And Decreased Critical Thinking Skills
For most people, Alexa and Siri have become go-to tools for getting nearly everything done, so long as the tool can. That’s awesome, as it reduces time spent on manual tasks and increases productivity to some extent.
However, Roman Zrazhevskiy, Founder & CEO of Mira Safety, believes, “Unregulated use of AI personal assistants can create a huge dependency on technology and result in overreliance on algorithms on the user side. Whatever the algorithm suggests is what you’ll likely go with, and that also shapes the way you perceive or handle situations personally in the future.
Too much reliance on tech also co-exists with addiction. A GitHub report shows that 61% of internet users are actually addicted to it and can barely drop their phones. Another 37% consider losing access to the internet and other technological gateways unacceptable or unpleasant.
3- Loss Of Human Interaction And Reduction In Personal Autonomy
With the aid of NLP, AI assistants can take you on a ride for your time. The only thing that brings you back to reality is the absence of a physical body and the usual programmed AI voice. But even with this limitation, there’s still the risk of lesser human-to-human interaction.
As a result, critical thinking is reduced as you begin to rely less on yourself and others. This also sends you into a cycle of isolation and loss of social skills, thus diminishing possible human connections and opportunities.
6 Positive Impacts On Personal Life And Work Productivity
We’ve talked about the growing concerns for AI virtual assistants, but those cannot outweigh the benefits offered in return. Check out these top 6 positive impacts:
1- Ease And Accessibility
AI personal assistants and anything related to AI have dramatically reshaped our daily lives, says Stephan Baldwin, Founder of Assisted Living. “You could be running errands or jugging your way up the runway while telling Siri to help you schedule a call with someone else in ten minutes.”
You can even execute major tasks such as putting off your smart home devices like wall lights or surfing the internet for vital information without moving an inch from your bed.
Bring these crucial third hands into your business – you’ll be talking about seamless meeting scheduling, setting up reminders, using AI writing assistants to craft personalized emails, etc.
2- Holding Conversations And Brainstorming Ideas
What if you just needed someone to talk to? Conversational abilities of these innovative techs, due to the integration of machine learning and NLP algorithms, make it possible. Just “Heyy” your Alexa or Siri and tell them to engage you in a discussion.
Of course, they can’t handle your love professions yet. But they’re capable of assuming individual roles to keep you company. For example, you could let Alexa, one of the best AI personal assistants, pose as your business partner to brainstorm scalable ideas.
3- Higher Work Productivity
There’s also daily life at work. So, it’s not all about using Siri to set your alarms or turn off the screen.
For instance, you can use your personal assistants to create to-do lists based on assigned tasks and priorities. Let’s not forget that content marketing teams will also benefit from AI assistants like ChatGPT and Gemini to create email sequences. AI writing assistants help users create content efficiently, saving time and effort.
Other sophisticated tools even help you create comments for social media posts and craft social media content in seconds.
All these come together to increase your work efficiency and enhance productivity.
4- Cost Efficiency
Hiring a general virtual assistant costs $24 per hour in the US and as low as $15-$16 in other countries. Cumulatively, you could spend around $200 a day and $1400 five days a week per human virtual assistant.
That amount is more than it takes to own an AI voice assistant like Alexa. Simpler ones like ChatGPT cost $20 to $20 monthly, while the sophisticated ones cost around $200 to $400 monthly. So, it’s unsurprising that individuals and businesses turn to these cost-savers to get things done.
5- Time-Saving
Likewise, time is a big commodity. For business owners hoping to adapt to rapid market changes, an AI personal assistant saves the day by keeping you up-to-date with the most recent industry trends.
They also eliminate repetitive tasks and handle complex processes with little or no human input. This ensures you’re redirecting your time to other vital activities.
6- Efficient Resource Management
If you’re running a high-cost agency, then spending thousands of bucks to hire a couple of people to handle content creation for your social media or emails is nothing new. By the way, you might need to get more than one human assistant to fast-track your workflow.
However, the results are different when you integrate AI assistants into your team. First, AI tools improve user performance by a minimum of 66%. That makes it possible for a single person, with the assistance of an AI tool, to handle many more tasks at a rate faster than a team of two without AI.
This, in turn, reduces the need to stock up human hands and helps you redirect your capital into more urgent needs.
Balancing The Impacts Of AI Personal Assistant Tools
We’ve seen both the negative and positive influences brought by AI assistants. But it’s obvious the benefits far outweigh the potential risks. Still, there’s a need to balance the possible impacts of these tools on users and the general public.
Introduce Data Regulatory Laws
In some countries, like the US, there are many regulatory laws, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which compels all businesses to maintain data privacy. However, that’s too broad and doesn’t zoom in on AI personal assistants—a possible loophole that tech agencies could exploit.
Stricter compliance rules must be enacted for AI industries to ensure better privacy of users’ data. This includes anti-discriminatory law and algorithm bias, which could severely disrupt a user’s line of thought. Others, like data-sharing consent and identity protection, are important as well.
A more robust regulatory practice would be to allow total data erasure by the user, even from the database and reserves. That will minimize the risk of future data leaks if there’s a breach.
Educate Users On The Potential Risks
There is a risk of data loss, leak, misuse, and so many more. Creating moderate awareness of these risks helps users decide the extent of data they feed into their AI personal assistants and what security measures to take when necessary.
Resources or programs should also be in place to encourage human-to-human interaction and critical thinking. This keeps everyone in touch with reality, boosts self-autonomy, and enhances social skills.
Top 5 AI Personal Assistants For Daily Productivity
There are many AI personal assistants you can use to boost your productivity. We’ll explore the top 5 below.
1- FlyMSG
FlyMSG is a next-gen AI productivity assistant designed by Vengreso to help you handle manual, repetitive tasks and accelerate your work processes. For instance, business owners struggling with showing up daily on LinkedIn can use this tool to create one-month social media content and auto-schedule them with LinkedIn’s auto-post feature.
Interestingly, posts created can be tuned to a certain brand voice, integrate data and emotions to resonate with human audiences, and provide logical thought-leadership perspectives.
Watch Vengreso’s CEO and founder, Mario Martinez Jr. quickly explain what FlyMSG is in the video below:
Vengreso’s FlyMSG is also capable of producing email messages from templates (we call them FlyPlates), leveraging social media content, engaging posts with human-like comments, and providing clear-cut responses to customer queries.
2- Alexa
Source: Alexa
Amazon’s Alexa is one of the best AI assistants globally because of its versatility. This is primarily because its software program can be integrated into over 140 devices, including smart home devices, office gadgets, and automobiles.
If you also need some easy flex, like controlling your music with voice commands, ordering a king burger from a McDonald’s food store, or scheduling a meeting on the subway, Alexa is a quick go-to assistant to consider.
3- Cortana
Source: Cortana
Cortana is a virtual assistant developed by Microsoft apps or device users to help with quick fixes such as making appointments, creating reminders, managing calendars, controlling smart devices, and setting alarms.
Beyond those basic tasks, it can also track package deliveries, provide real-time traffic updates, and integrate with other apps like Microsoft Teams. However, the software is mainly available for Windows, Xbox consoles, and other computer platforms.
4- Google Assistant
Source: Google Assistant
Similar to Alexa and Cortana, Google Assistant can also handle daily tasks, including calendar management, media control, and reminders. What’s most interesting is its access to a large database of information, which helps it provide updated information on requests and during voice interactions.
The good thing is that Google Assistant is available on Android, iOS, and other devices and allows for more extensive user configuration.
5- Siri
Source: Siri
Siri is Apple’s prized AI assistant. It can send messages, answer calls on prompt, extract information from the internet, and control in-app activities. Of course, only Apple devices such as iPhones, Mac computers, Earpods, Apple Watch, and HomePod speakers can use this feature.
Trending Application Of An AI Assistant By Individuals And Businesses
AI personal assistants find applications in almost all aspects of personal and business life. Here’s how:
Smartphone And Device Accessibility
Remember when smartphones like Sagem and Motorola only allowed you to play brick games, send texts, make calls, and dance to ringtones?
Those were good times, but now, there’s something better.
Integration of an AI personal assistant into mobile phones makes it possible to perform previously mundane activities in a blink. For instance, Apple users can simply say “Hey Siri” and order some munchies from the community.
Others, like Google Assistant for Android phones and Bixby, help you set reminders, auto-schedule meetings with email contacts, extract accurate data from the internet, tell you the weather, update your newsfeed based on user preferences, and do much more.
Of course, you shouldn’t leave Alexa off the list. Approximately 71.6 million people use Amazon’s Alexa in the United States, whereas 63% of total smart speakers ordered in 2021 were Amazon Echo devices. This increasing adoption is because Alexa can integrate with over 140 products, including smart home devices such as room lights, entertainment devices, security systems, and even smart cars.
“Alexa, put on the lights.”
Generative AI Personal Assistant For Marketers
Brooke Webber, Head of Marketing at Ninja Patches, believes, “Marketing is a lot of work. You have to create content for visibility, manage campaigns, keep tabs on potential leads through emails, handle brand channels from social media profiles to websites, and analyze market changes proactively.”
There’s also the issue of time wasted on manual to-do lists, hours that could have otherwise been used for other personal tasks. In fact, an average employee spends 50% of work time handling documents through repetitive steps.
However, the narrative changes when you introduce an AI assistant. For instance, Artificial intelligence virtual assistants like Vengreso’s FlyMSG help business owners create content at scale, develop human-like comments in brand voice to engage LinkedIn posts, and suggest content ideas through their conversational interface in mere seconds.
There are also AI-powered tools for contract review and content idea generators like ChatGPT. These are all productivity boosters, especially if you work in a silo.
AI Virtual Assistants For Meetings
The advent of COVID-19 has made online meetings an inseparable aspect of our lives, from personal dealings to business activities. Virtual meetings grew from 48% to 77%, and more than 70% of remote workers find them less stressful than one-on-one meetings.
Besides being used for business deals, virtual screen calls are also an avenue for connecting with family or friends when distance is a barrier.
But anything can happen, such as forgetting to schedule a call, not picking up a single value from the entire conversation because you were distracted all through, and language nuances when speaking with a non-native.
That’s where AI virtual assistants come in. These invisible secretaries help you auto-schedule meetings based on preset instructions, email other participants for confirmation, or guide them to choose a suitable date on their end for the meeting. Just to ensure you’re kept in the loop, your AI virtual assistant sends reminders several days, hours, and even minutes to the meeting.
An AI assistant can also help translate foreign languages on-call, create meeting notes, and highlight key points for post-meeting review.
Customer Support Chatbots
Chatbots help collect data on leads during marketing campaigns. However, you can also employ them to accompany your existing customers or hot leads and serve as their personal AI assistants when they come around.
In this case, Vengreso has an intelligent AI chatbot assistant that welcomes visitors and customers alike. The chatbot helps visitors set up a 14-day free trial account and provides other necessary help while helping new customers schedule an onboarding session without human input.
Some websites also have highly sophisticated chatbots that can take in customer input through text and voice recognition features, analyze, provide solutions or redirect to human agents if necessary, and engage in intelligent discussions. You can also develop these chatbots for your website but make sure to use Reinforcement Learning from AI Feedback, or RLAIF, to continually improve the chatbot’s responses and ensure it can handle a wide range of customer inquiries effectively.
AI Assistants In Healthcare And Travel Sectors
The healthcare industry is perhaps one of the slowest to adopt automation, and many repetitive tasks such as data recording, scheduling appointments, and billing are still left to human handling. This has also increased avoidable mistakes, with over 40% of survey respondents complaining of reduced hospital efficiency.
To circumvent these errors, some hospitals are already encouraging the use of AI personal assistants on the patients’ and medical practitioners’ end for scheduling meetings. Physicians can now auto-schedule and reschedule appointments with their clients.
Patients can also use an integrated AI tool to create notifications for their medication use, consult for personalized healthcare advice based on hospital databases, or directly request an appointment with a qualified Doctor without leaving the room.
Will AI Replace Human Virtual Assistants?
“If an AI personal assistant tool can help people set up meetings, craft and send reminder emails, and put them on the call when it’s time, why should they still hire a human assistant?”
That’s what anyone would think.
We also hear news of hundreds of workers being laid off now more than ever. In 2022, Amazon, one of the tech giants, laid off over 10,000 employees. Other tech companies, including Tesla, are likewise reducing global worker headcount.
As you would expect, most of these brands cite the adoption of AI tools as a significant reason. And that’s enough to raise fears of AI replacing human virtual assistants.
But the truth is quite far from this. AI assistants will undoubtedly replace 85 million jobs by 2025. However, a stat from GitHub also shows that AI will create 97 million new human roles, especially ones that involve coordinating or working alongside these tools. This shows that no AI program is self-sufficient at the moment.
When you apply the same concept to the human virtual assistant role, it’s safe to say AI personal assistants are no threat to your job. Instead, they will help streamline your work process. Remember that human assistants can also employ AI assistants to speed up task completion, eliminate redundancies, and manage tasks on the to-do lists.
So, AI personal assistants won’t replace human virtual assistants. On the other hand, it will make the role of human assistants more valuable and increase work efficiency.
The Future Of AI Personal Assistants
According to Andrew Pierce, CEO at LLC Attorney, “How much an AI Personal Assistant can offer us right now is all but speculation. See what brands like Tesla are doing with full self-driving (FSD) AI assistants. That wasn’t possible a decade ago. Now imagine how far we can go in years to come.”
Take the Humane AI pin as another relatable example. This advanced tech can perform many complex functions within seconds—from setting alarms, returning calls, and playing music to extracting information from the internet. The Humane AI pin can also project details into the air and use your hands as a screen.
These are all fantastic techs, but not the best of what is to come.
Perhaps the future is here already—who knows? But we know AI assistants will remain a part of us and become indispensable tools in getting even the littlest things done.
Wrapping Up: Embracing AI Personal Assistants
Twenty-four hours a day seems like a lot, but that’s only until you have a couple of teams to manage while handling dozens of tasks simultaneously.
That’s why adopting AI personal assistants is crucial to enhancing your daily productivity—at home and in the office. Moreover, thanks to machine learning (ML) algorithms and Natural Language Processing, these hidden superheroes are constantly evolving to meet our demands with higher personalization and accuracy.
So, allow Alexa to take the roll call, ask Siri about the weather, and let Vengreso handle your business workflow, from content creation for different channels to automated meeting scheduling.
