Virtual assistants are wonderful at following your commands but absolutely terrible at giving life advice. Tidio editor Kazimierz Rajnerowicz spent over 30 hours asking half a dozen popular artificial intelligence (AI)-powered voice assistants and chatbots all kinds of questions and concluded that while virtual assistants are great at retrieving facts, they aren't advanced enough to hold a conversation. "AI today is pattern recognition," explained Liziana Carter, founder of conversational AI start-up Grow AI, to Lifewire in a conversation over email. "Expecting it to advise whether robbing a bank is right or wrong is expecting creative thinking from it, also known as AI General Intelligence, which we're far from right now." Rajnerowicz thought of the experiment in response to forecasts by Juniper Research that predicts the number of AI voice assistant devices in use will exceed the human population by 2024. "... a better approach may be to use that power to gain back time to spend on the things that make us unique as humans."

Natural Language Processing, or NLP, is a subset of AI that enables computers to converse with humans. This involves using AI to'understand' human text or speech – comprehend the meaning, context, requirement, etc., and then deliver a response in text or speech that satisfies the user. NLP achieves this by combining computational linguistics with machine learning, statistical, and deep learning models. NLP gives the system the ability to fully determine the writer or speaker's intent, context, and sentiment. The simplest example of NLP in action is Siri and Google Assistant.

Evolution in business concepts and implementation of the latest technology trends are driving the thriving growth of businesses. Among all, artificial intelligence is best known to transform a business by automating the processes and making the tasks seamless. And the inventions like virtual assistant and chatbots are practically implementing these concepts to showcase results that promise skyrocketing growth and boost in business. A virtual assistant is a bot that assists the users to complete tasks throughout the time. By implementing the practical concepts of AI and machine learning, these assistants are created to provide a personalized feel to users and offer excellent user experience.

A few decades ago, if a person wanted to buy something they had to physically go to the store and hope the item they wanted was in stock. However, the nature of retail has been greatly changed by e-commerce. Now one can view an almost limitless amount of items and purchase them instantly without even stepping out of their home or office. The Internet and the world of e-commerce that was created and further enabled by mobile has made it such that you can now go from wanting an item to having it in a matter of hours without ever stepping foot outside your home or office and you also have access to a much larger selection of goods. The pervasiveness of chatbots and voice assistants are making it so that ordering something is now just a matter of uttering a phrase like "Reorder toilet paper" and it's possible to go from urgent situation to problem resolved in a short amount of time.

The buzz around artificial intelligence (AI) is almost deafening. Every industry is looking at how they can apply the power of AI to enhance productivity or improve decision-making. But despite its recent stardom, AI isn't as new as it may seem. The concept of AI has been around since 1950 when Alan Turing published his paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence, which sparked a new way of considering technology's potential for comprehension and thought. AI, and the relationship between artificial intelligence and unified communications and technologies, however, has had its stops and starts over the years.

Despite concerns over data privacy and immature technology, AI assistants and chatbots are gaining a foothold among businesses, according to a report from IT professional network Spiceworks. The report, which surveyed 529 IT professionals from North America and Europe, showed that 29% of respondents have implemented one or more chatbots or intelligent assistants for work-related tasks, or plan to do so this year. Adoption was higher for larger organizations, which have more resources to evaluate emerging technologies, with 24% using AI assistants or chatbots currently and 16% set to deploy the technology this year, for a total of 40%. "A lot of businesses are starting to see how these technologies are useful, and because they are more widely available, we are seeing adoption increase," said Peter Tsai, Spiceworks senior technology analyst and the author of the report. He added, however, that the technology is still "in its infancy."

Salome Sigurjonsdottir, 10, tests a voice-controlled television in an electronics store in Reykjavik on April 15, 2017. Sales assistant Einar Dadi said none of his TVs understood Icelandic. The revered Icelandic language, seen by many as a source of identity and pride, is being undermined by the widespread use of English both for mass tourism and in the voice-controlled artificial intelligence devices coming into vogue. Joseph Reger, Fujitsu Fellow, and Chief Technical Officer EMEIA, Fujitsu says that 2018 will be the rise of ubiquitous virtual assistants. He predicts that over the course of the year, we'll see an increase in the number of virtual assistants and chatbots, but that by 2020 consumers won't even know that their interface isn't human.

AI has been kicking around for a while now, though many associate the concept with Alan Turing, who introduced what we know as the "Turing Test" in a 1950 paper, "Computing Machinery and Intelligence." What is new is the ability to scale human to machine conversations -- once the realm only of humans -- where the machine provides relevant answers to specific questions at an individual context. We see this scale in the mass market thanks to entrants from large consumer electronics brands such as Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa, but this capability has yet to reach the corporate market. AI-enabled search promises to transform the way people interact with information and digital assets, driving new efficiencies and creating value from information that has been all but lost in the "digital junk drawers" that are our corporate information management systems. For AI to deliver on its promise, these junk drawers need preliminary organizing structures before the vision of conversational interactions can be realized.