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One week with Microsoft Cortana
"Never mind it. Never mind," I cursed, looking down on the poorly formed monstrosity that gazed back at me with a singular pulsing eye. No, not at me -- through me. This was not my trusty Google Assistant, with whom I shared a deep logistical and day-planning-based bond. This thing barely looked like the AI to which I was accustomed and -- even then -- only in passing. This alien program appears to have eaten my digital assistant and started wearing its skin -- and I'm about to spend the next week having it organize my life.
One week with Siri
The iPhone has been my primary smartphone for well over a decade, and therefore I've had Siri on my phone ever since its introduction in 2011. But I never really found a reason to use it. I've always felt self-conscious when talking to my phone -- I find people who use voice commands in public really annoying -- so I wanted to avoid doing it myself. I have Bluetooth in my car so I don't have to use my phone while driving, and when I'm at home, I have my trusty fingers instead. So I imagined that being forced to use Siri for a whole week was going to be a nightmare.
One week with Samsung Bixby
Nobody wants an assistant they can't trust. And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't put my faith in Samsung's Bixby. It's the newest entry in the crowded field of virtual assistants, and its youthful inexperience shows. After living with Bixby on the Galaxy S8 for a week, I couldn't wait to kick it to the curb. To its credit, Bixby has some intriguing features that make it potentially more functional than the competition. But it's simply too early for it to compete with more established assistants like Siri and Alexa.
One week with Alexa
My morning routine is simple: I wake up when my phone's alarm goes off, I go back to sleep, wake up again, contemplate more sleep, get dressed, make coffee and listen to one of Alexa's "flash briefings" before I start slinging words on the internet. Getting that first news blast of the day used to be a job for my trusty clock radio, but no longer: Alexa's invasion has begun.
One week with Google Assistant
I had been in a years-long relationship with Siri when my affair with the Google Assistant began. It started innocently enough. Assistant made me laugh with some silly jokes, and we played a cute game she made in the Allo chat app called "Emoji Movie." Soon, Assistant popped up in more places in my life -- whether it was a smartwatch I was reviewing or the Assistant app on my iPhone. Then, for a week, I was tasked with using Assistant exclusively for all the things I would normally ask Siri to do. I thought it would be a fun change, but committing to Assistant required some big adjustments.
Engadget is testing all the major AI assistants
Hardly a day goes by that we don't cover virtual assistants. If it's not news about Siri, there's some new development with Alexa, or Cortana or Google Assistant. Perhaps a new player, like Samsung, is wading into the space. Even Android creator Andy Rubin is considering building an assistant of his own. And his company probably isn't the only one that thinks there's room for another AI helper. With virtual assistants becoming such an integral part of our lives (or at least our tech-news diets), we felt it was time to stop and take stock of everything that's happening here. For one week, we asked five Engadget reporters to live with one of the major assistants: Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, the Google Assistant, Microsoft's Cortana and Samsung's Bixby. What you'll see on Engadget throughout the week aren't reviews, per se, nor did we endeavor to crown the "best" digital assistant. Not only is that a subjective question but, as it turns out, none of the assistants are as smart or reliable as we'd like. In the absence of a winner, then, what we have is a state of the union: a picture of where AI helpers stand and where they're headed. Follow our series here. And, at the rate each of these assistants is maturing, don't be surprised if we revisit them sooner than later. This week Engadget is examining each of the five major virtual assistants, taking stock of how far they've come and how far they still have to go. Find all our coverage here.