No business today can deny the benefits of artificial intelligence technology, the way it is paving ways for new opportunities and business benefits. Not only it is transforming businesses, but also society as a whole.
Tech giants like Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google have built their own AI-based personal assistants and they aren’t doing this just like that. These companies have invested heavily for the purpose of acquiring AI startups.
For instance, Amazon acquired Lex, Google acquired api.ai, and Facebook acquired wit.ai. These acquired platforms help the tech giants to build AI personal assistant and provide other businesses with new ways for growth.
Apple Siri, Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, and Microsoft Cortana are the most popular AI-powered personal assistants in the market. If you are thinking that AI assistant development is a task that can be done only by these big enterprises, then it’s just your myth. The rapid advancements in the technologies and digital transformation arena have brought every technology to common adoption.
Every business can develop such personal assistants for their own benefits. If you are looking to build your own artificial intelligence assistant, then this article is for you.
Before diving into how to make your own AI assistant, let’s first learn what actually is an AI assistant, its benefits, working, cost of development, and much more.
What is Personal AI Assistant?
AI personal assistant is an application program powered by artificial intelligence technology that can understand the voice commands by the users and then fulfil the task assigned with the commands.
It is also known as a digital assistant or AI assistant. Siri, Alexa, Cortana, and Google Assistant have become mainstream today, being used through smartphones and dedicated devices. For example, just say ‘Ok Google’ on Android, or ‘Hey Siri’ on an iPhone, and the devices will wait for your command.
Businesses are using digital assistants to optimize the tasks that are traditionally handed to personal secretaries. For instance, the digital assistants can perform almost every task of the human assistants, such as taking dictation, reading emails and text messages, finding phone numbers, dialling and calling on asked phone numbers, setting reminders for meetings, fixing meetings and appointments, etc.
Furthermore, an artificial intelligence personal assistant can also help in various other tasks. These tasks include weather forecasting, opening apps, launching Windows apps, searching queries on Google, opening websites, reading out news, etc.
Digital Assistants driving AI Growth
Undoubtedly, AI is one of the hottest technologies today and its market is booming. In 2017, the artificial intelligence market was valued at just $15.70 billion. It is expected that the global AI market will reach $300 billion by 2023.
Businesses are aware of this growth, but what they don’t know is that the growth is driven majorly by the demand for personal AI assistant. Research shows that the voice and speech recognition market will grow at a CAGR of 17.2% from 2018 to 2025. This is a massive growth.
AI assistants are powering almost every smartphone and computer today, without users even realizing that they have access to artificial intelligence services.
The numbers below show a breakdown of digital assistants in use already:
Before developing, you have to ensure that the AI assistant is a finetune solution because it will represent your business or brand communicating with your teams or customers. It should be optimized for performance and user experience.
Technologies and Tech Stack Required
Along with artificial intelligence, an AI assistant makes use of a cloud solution and a coding language. The subsets of AI used include speech recognition, machine learning, and natural language processing (NLP). Some advanced assistants also use the internet of things (IoT) technology, such as Amazon Alexa for smart homes.
Wondering how to make a personal assistant program? Well, the program can be made with Python coding.
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Primary tasks that can be done with AI assistants
- Adding events to the calendar
- Adding items to To-Do list
- Requesting songs
- Checking weather and news
- Controlling smart home devices
- Making and receiving calls
- Sending text messages and emails
- Getting directions on maps
- Finding hotels and restaurants
- Booking trains, buses, and flights
- Checking flight status
- Automating customer service
- Finding recommendations
- Creating shopping lists
- Ordering groceries
- Scheduling meetings
- Setting alarms and reminders
- Shopping online
Business Benefits of Artificial Intelligence Personal Assistant
Apart from meeting the personal requirements, the AI personal assistants are also benefiting startups, small and medium businesses (SMBs), as well as large enterprises.
A majority of businesses are already integrating voice-activated technology into their systems and operations to enhance the user experience.
Read Also: How to give your best shot at Creating a Voice User Interface Design?
Following are the primary benefits of using AI voice assistants in business:
- Personalize consumer experience
- Augment human talent
- Enhance marketing efficiency
- Enable improved insights for sales and marketing teams
- Boost product sales
- Get things done quickly to save time for important things
How to make your own AI Assistant in Python?
To create an AI-based personal assistant using Python language, you have to create some modules and write code for the required methods. Below, you will find the modules and methods, along with the complete code to develop Python personal assistant.
Modules
1. Pyttsx3
It is a cross-platform library that is used to convert text to speech. It is an essential module for every AI assistant because text to speech conversion is a necessary part of it. A great thing about pyttsx3 library is that works in an offline mode as well. Use this command in the terminal to install the library:
pip install pyttsx3
2. SpeechRecognition
To identify the audio and speech and convert it into text for processing, you can use the SpeechRecognition module. Use the command below in the terminal to install this module:
pip install SpeechRecognition
3. Webbrowser
To show the web results to the users, you need to use the webbrowser module. It provides a user-friendly user interface. Here is the command to install this module:
pip install webbrowser
4. Wikipedia
To fetch and read/show information from Wikipedia, you can use the wikipedia module. Here is the command for the same:
pip install wikipedia
5. Ecapture
Use of ecapture module will enable capturing photos using the camera. Type this command in the terminal:
from ecapture import ecapture as ec
6. Datetime
It is used to maintain date and time.
import datetime
7. Os
This is a library in Python that allows the function to communicate with the operating system in place.
import os
8. Time
It is used to show or speak the time.
import time
9. Subprocess
A very useful and standard library in Python that is used for processing a number of different commands to the systems, such as restarting the PC.
import subprocess
10. Json
The role of json module is to store and exchange data.
import json
11. Wolfram alpha
It is an API whose role is to compute or calculate advanced answers using Wolfram’s algorithms.
import wolframalpha
Methods to use for AI Personal Assistant Development
Speak- This method is used to take the voice from the machine.
Take query- Take query method identifies the condition whether it is true or false. It shows the output when it is true.
Hello- This method in Python is used for greeting the user.
takeCommand- This method accepts the commands from the users and then uses speechrecognition module to identify them.
Main- The execution of the files takes place in the main method. To fetch the output from main method, the takequery method complements it.
if __name__ == ‘__main__’:
# main method for executing
# the functions
Take_query()
Now that you have understood the methods and modules used to develop AI digital assistants, it’s time for you to try it yourself. Below is the complete code that includes most of the above-mentioned methods and modules:
AI Personal Assistant Development Cost
The cost of AI personal assistant development depends on multiple factors, including technical tools used, methods and modules, design tools, level of intelligence, the experience of developers, etc. The estimated cost will be between $30,000 to $50,000.
What is the Future of Personal AI Assistants?
It’s not difficult to predict the future of AI assistants as the technology becomes more mainstream and reaches people at an increased rate. The adoption of these devices is growing rapidly. For instance, eMarketer says that around 70% of the people in the US will be using an Amazon Echo device by the end of 2021.
These stats are for Alexa alone. People are also using other digital assistants by Microsoft, Google, and more brands. What this means is that almost everyone will have access to AI assistants and the future is bright for voice-activated technology.
With time, these devices are also getting advanced to solve real-world problems and offering a new level of capabilities to the users. These will get deeper into the business workflows with more effectiveness and efficiency.
Wrapping up:
In this era of digital transformation, no business should avoid leveraging the benefits of a digital assistant powered by AI. It can help in gaining a competitive advantage, enabling better customer experience, save on costs, and drive business growth. Python programming language is great for this development, allowing you integrate modules and methods easily.
For any queries regarding artificial intelligence digital assistant, feel free to drop in your query.
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