Here's how intelligent personal assistants work

If you've owned a smartphone from the past five years then you've probably used an Intelligent Personal Assistant. Even though there are dozens (possibly hundreds or even thousands) of digital assistants, the most commonly used are Apple's Siri, Amazon Alexa, Microsoft's Cortana, and Google Assistant. But how do they work?

An Intelligent Personal Assistant or virtual assistant is an AI-based technology. The software uses a device's microphone to listen to a user’s request while the speaker is used to give a verbal response. But it’s what happens between these actions that is interesting: it is a combination of several different technologies including speech recognition, language analysis and AI-based natural language processing etc.

When a user requests an Intelligent personal assistant (IPA) to perform a task, the artificial intelligence implemented in its software converts a user's spoken language into data that can be analysed. This data is then compared to a query plan to formulate a suitable response based on information from the software’s database that usually sits on a network of servers in a cloud. This is why most AI assistants cannot work without having a reliable Internet connection.