Think Tank - Is voice headed for the trough of disillusionment? No. But voice assistants are.

The Gartner [locked link] is a framework that suggests new technologies typically go through five distinct phases of user expectations over time. These include:

Brian Roemmele believes we are headed for a voice “winter” borrowing the terminology that was used for four different periods of “AI Winters” over four decades characterized by low interest in the technology and little funding. I agree; sort of. I don’t subscribe to the “winter” metaphor where innovation stops and resources are totally diverted elsewhere. However, I do believe the sentiment around voice assistants headed for the trough of disillusionment.

The Hype Cycle is all about sentiment and is based on the assumption that perception leads to reality when it comes to tech. After the innovation trigger (let’s call this far-field voice recognition, smart speaker adoption, improvements in ASR and NLU, the emergence of a voice developer and product ecosystem) sentiment improves rapidly until there is a peak of expectations that turn out to be inflated based on what the technology can realistically deliver at that time. Once the realization sets in that there is a mismatch between expectations and reality, sentiment overcorrects to the negative leading to the trough of disillusionment. Social media is a fad and will never make the leap to mobile. Smartphones are a toy and will not threaten Blackberry’s stranglehold on mobile. Apple is dead. People actually said these things. They were all logical reactions to arrival in the trough. They were all patently wrong.

Member