Our Inevitable Shift from Digital Assistants to Empathetic Digital Companions
By: Intuition Robotics
Tags: Alexa, Amazon Echo, Voice Assistant, Google Assistant, Conversational UI

Voice interfaces will likely emerge into more comprehensive agents, using multiple modalities to interact with us in a way that’s more natural, effective, and immersive. With digital companion agents, this far-fetched sounding notion is not far from our reality. Taking voice assistants to the next level, these intelligent AI agents will be at our side, embedded into the devices we already know and love, such as cars, appliances, wearables, and otherwise. Ultimately, they’ll learn how to optimally interact with each of us, creating meaningful, customized experiences that simplify our lives and amplify our abilities like never before.

The shift from digital assistants to digital companions

Digital assistants make our lives a whole lot easier. Digital companions do the same — and then some.

The Association for Computing Machinery defines a digital companion as a “cognitive agent that assists human users by taking on three roles: as guardians, assistants or mentors, and partners.” The natural evolution of digital assistants, digital companion agents replace utilitarian voice command with a bidirectional relationship based on empathy, trust, and anticipation of needs, to effectively influence behaviors and emotions. And rather than communicating entirely via voice, these agents carry out comprehensive, multimodal interactions that can include, but aren’t limited to: speech, UI displays, sound, media, movement, and LEDs.

Through sensory inputs and advanced proprietary algorithms, digital companion agents learn their user and environment over time, to understand situational context and adequately engage with each user in the ideal format, at the opportune moment. Using a cognitive, goal-based AI decision-making system to decide the best course of action to take, the agent offers smart suggestions, updates, conversation, and otherwise — all customized for each individual user.

In other words, it intuitively knows if, when, and how to engage with each of us most effectively. Instead of waiting for our command like a voice assistant would, a digital companion learns, remembers, and anticipates each of our individual needs and preferences, adjusting and executing their interactive experience accordingly. Whether that’s intuitively remembering how often we like to interact and in which particular style, how to interact in a group vs. individual setting, what type of information we prefer to receive, our likes, dislikes, and beyond. By proactively anticipating our needs and preferences, the agents work alongside us harmoniously, and can adequately streamline, ease and enrich our daily procedures.

Another aspect that sets digital companions apart from digital assistants is that digital companion agents embody distinct, in-depth characters — unique, distinguishable personalities that reflect, extend and personify the brand and type of product that they’re embedded into. Through the agent, brands have the opportunity to bring their brand and product to life, designing a unique character that embodies their values and the message they want to convey. One brand’s agent might embody a sarcastic butler, another’s could be more fun and silly, and another’s could act more like a superhero. ElliQ’s persona, for example, is loyal yet playful — we like to describe it as a combination of a Labrador and Sam from Lord of the Rings.

This content was originally published on the Intuition Robotics blog. Read the full post to learn more about digital companions.