How to develop a virtual assistant app like Siri or Alexa?

Before the advent of artificial intelligence, who had imagined that we would ever be able to talk to a phone, and it would perform various tasks only through verbal commands. And if we talk about the present, it feels like AI, integrated into voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant, has been in our lives since the beginning and will stay forever.

Voice assistants have simplified our lives by doing many tasks, such as ordering food, calling a contact, sending a message, browsing the web to fetch required information, and more, merely by a voice command. Apart from the individuals, these voice assistants are rendering huge benefits to various industries as well.

Wondering how? Well, using a voice assistant, businesses are delivering support services and improving the efficiency of various operations. If you are also looking to build such an application, then you are in the right place. This article sheds light on the three ways for integrating a virtual assistant in a mobile app:

Integrating reliable technologies from renowned firms (Siri, Cortana, and Google Now).
Relying on open-source solutions like Jasper, Api.ai, Melissa, Wit.ai.
Go for independent development based on TTS, smart tagging, speech compression, noise control, voice interface, and STT.

Method 1 (Siri, Cortana, and Google Now)

Siri

After WWDC 2016, Apple’s Siri was made available to be integrated with mobile applications in specific areas, including messages and contacts, workout car booking, audio and video calls, photo search, and payments through Siri.

For letter users to integrate this voice-assistant, the company launched a particular SiriSDK with two frameworks. The first framework includes a variety of jobs to be supported in your mobile application, and the second one gives suggestions on a custom visual representation when a job is being done.

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The range of tasks included in the different types of apps is known as Intents. In SiriSDK, these intents have their respective custom classes with fixed properties, which precisely state the task they are associated with. Siri processes these intents in three steps- Resolve -> Confirm -> Handle.

Cortana

Using Cortana, you can choose from three ways to integrate the name of the app into a voice command:

Suffixal- Putting the app name to the end of the verbal command line (Set some workout in Stay Fit)
Infixal- Placing the app name in the middle of the verbal command line (Set a Stay Fit workout for the evening)
Prefixal- In this case, you can put the name of the mobile app in the beginning (Stay Fit, select a preferred exercise time for me)

Google Now

Google Now is not just about listening and answering; rather, it is a smart assistant that can learn, analyze and conclude. Unlike its competitor Apple, Google doesn’t want a developer to fulfill complicated design requirements to integrate the voice-assistant in an app.

To integrate Google Assistant in your mobile app, the only thing you have to do is to register it with Google. Google offers the developers the ease of integrating voice functionality, through Voice Action APIs, in wearable as well as mobile applications.

Method 2 (Independent Services- Jasper, Api.ai, Melissa, Wit.ai)

Developers can also use the below-given tools to integrate voice technology in mobile apps:

Jasper- Written in Python, Jasper can learn and listen. By using this tool, you can build your own voice assistant that performs the given tasks at any hour of the day.
ai- You can use free or premium (works in a private cloud) version of Api.ai to create your own voice assistant. Apart from voice recognition, this tool also facilitates converting voice into text.
Melissa- If you want to create a customized voice assistant, then choose Melissa as it can speak, read notes, upload photos, play music, and do a variety of other tasks. Like Jasper, Melissa is also written in Python; it can work efficiently on Windows, Linux, and OX X.
ai- Wit.ai is another useful tool to create a voice assistant. It follows the same system as that of the Siri. The tool allows developers to simply choose from a long list of intents to set the voice technology in your app.

Method 3

You can use the following technologies to build a voice assistant:

Text to Speech (TTS)
Smart tagging
Speech compression
Noise control
Voice interface
Speech to Text (STT)

To know more about these methods, connect to an experienced and professional mobile app development services provider.

Final Words

With voice-assistants becoming the latest trend in mobile application development, businesses are finding it a necessity to either build a new voice assistant or integrate the technology into their existing mobile applications. If you too want to develop a digital assistant for your specific business, then reach out to a reliable custom app development company or hire dedicated developers with relevant experience.