Chatbots and personal assistants will enhance citizen data science, says Gartner V3

Gartner has said that chatbots and virtual assistants are between two and five years away from mainstream adoption, while speech recognition will reach that point in the next two years. The latest Hype Cycle - Gartner's visual tool for showing how close developing technologies are to mainstream adoption - puts chatbots at the early innovation trigger stage, while virtual personal assistants have passed the peak of inflated expectations and are on their way down to the trough of disillusionment. Despite the gap between them on the Hype Cycle, Gartner forecasts that both chatbots and virtual assistants will reach the mainstream at a roughly similar time, shortly after speech recognition - which they add value to. "The effects of speech recognition can be seen on a daily basis," said analyst Matthew Cain. Speech-to-text applications have proliferated due to the adoption of chatbots and virtual personal assistants (VPAs) by businesses, and consumer adoption of devices with speech interactions including smartphones, gaming consoles and specifically, VPA speakers." Van Baker, research VP at Gartner, said, "Increasingly, behaviour and event triggers will enhance virtual assistants.