For my last birthday, I received a very special gift from my husband: a virtual assistant from Amazon. More than just adding a new piece of hardware to my flat, this gift introduced a new family member, Alexa, into my life. Alexa now knows almost everything about my tastes and needs. Like most smart-speaker owners, I use it several times a day. From my favorite song to the city I plan to travel to or the time I wake up, Alexa knows more about my day-to-day life than my social networks.
This gift completely changed my way of accessing media. As a millennial kid, I grew up simultaneously with the Internet and had to learn how to search for meaningful content on the web and how to download music to my iPod Mini. Now, every day I’m learning how to speak with an artificial intelligence to access the info or the content I’m looking for, and I’m loving it!
The second piece of hardware I’m speaking to daily is my car. Being able to use my voice to activate certain controls so I can keep my hands on the wheel and my eyes on the road is a great safety feature. The perfect media experience for me would be to have the same voice service and the artificial intelligence behind it following me everywhere, from my home to my car.