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Definitions Since the advent of Amazon Echo, with its service called Alexa, various terms have emerged for this type of technology. You might hear any of the following: • Smart digital assistants • Voice-first devices • Smart speakers • Voice assistants • Chatbots These terms don’t mean exactly the same thing. The term “chat- bot” is used to describe an app that you can type questions to and get typed replies from. Instead of a live person, you are talk- ing to a service programmed to have a “personality.”7 “Voice- first device” refers to a device (usually a speaker) that you can talk to and hear spoken replies from, like Amazon Echo or Google Home. This can get confusing because some apps, like Google Assistant on a mobile phone, offer you both options: type and talk. For the purposes of this report, I’ll use the definition provided by Alpine in their “2017 Voice Report Executive Summary”: “A voice-first device is an always-on, intelligent piece of hardware where the primary interface is voice, both input and output.”8 This definition is useful because it has long been possible to talk to your mobile phone or computer (via Siri or dictation software), but Amazon Echo was the first to be always on, with the primary interface being voice. Some examples of voice-first devices are Amazon Echo, Apple’s HomePod, and Google Home. That takes care of defining the hardware, but what about the soft- ware that powers these devices? For that, we’ll use the term “voice assistant.” This definition from WhatIs.com is useful: “A voice assis- tant is a digital assistant that uses voice recognition, natural language processing and speech synthesis to provide aid to users through phones and voice recognition applications.”9 For another definition, see Amazon’s developer site:10 “The Alexa Voice Service (AVS) is Amazon’s intelligent voice recognition and natural language under- standing service that allows you to voice-enable any connected device that has a microphone and speaker.” What Is Voice-First Computing? 3