A method for implementing a digital personal assistant, comprising: launching a digital personal assistant in an end user device; receiving at the end user device a digital representation of an utterance of a user of the digital personal assistant as an audio stream; transmitting the audio stream to a speech recognition service in a digital personal assistant backend via a network; analysing the audio stream of the utterance with the speech recognition service to determine the phonetic content thereof and to map the phonetic content to words, which taken together comprise a recognized utterance; transmitting the recognized utterance to the digital personal assistance via the network; displaying a text version of the recognized utterance within a graphical user interface on a display of the end user device; receiving user input to confirm or edit the displayed text version of the recognized utterance to form a confirmed utterance; transmitting the confirmed utterance to a query understanding and response system in the digital personal assistant backend via the network; analysing the words of the confirmed utterance with the query understanding and response system to determine that the confirmed utterance comprises an utterance intended to engage with a persona of the digital personal assistant; in response to at least the determining that the confirmed utterance comprises an utterance intended to engage with the persona of the digital personal assistant, identifying a plurality of eligible responses to the utterance, the plurality of eligible responses including at least one of: a multimedia object that is displayed within or played back by a user interface of the digital personal assistant, the multimedia object being associated with a popular culture reference; and speech that is generated or played back by the digital personal assistant, the speech comprising an impersonation of a voice of a person associated with the popular culture reference; and selecting one of the plurality of eligible responses as a response to be provided by the digital personal assistant. launching a digital personal assistant in an end user device; receiving at the end user device a digital representation of an utterance of a user of the digital personal assistant as an audio stream; transmitting the audio stream to a speech recognition service in a digital personal assistant backend via a network; analysing the audio stream of the utterance with the speech recognition service to determine the phonetic content thereof and to map the phonetic content to words, which taken together comprise a recognized utterance; transmitting the recognized utterance to the digital personal assistance via the network; displaying a text version of the recognized utterance within a graphical user interface on a display of the end user device; receiving user input to confirm or edit the displayed text version of the recognized utterance to form a confirmed utterance; transmitting the confirmed utterance to a query understanding and response system in the digital personal assistant backend via the network; analysing the words of the confirmed utterance with the query understanding and response system to determine that the confirmed utterance comprises an utterance intended to engage with a persona of the digital personal assistant; in response to at least the determining that the confirmed utterance comprises an utterance intended to engage with the persona of the digital personal assistant, identifying a plurality of eligible responses to the utterance, the plurality of eligible responses including at least one of: a multimedia object that is displayed within or played back by a user interface of the digital personal assistant, the multimedia object being associated with a popular culture reference; and speech that is generated or played back by the digital personal assistant, the speech comprising an impersonation of a voice of a person associated with the popular culture reference; and selecting one of the plurality of eligible responses as a response to be provided by the digital personal assistant. a multimedia object that is displayed within or played back by a user interface of the digital personal assistant, the multimedia object being associated with a popular culture reference; and speech that is generated or played back by the digital personal assistant, the speech comprising an impersonation of a voice of a person associated with the popular culture reference; and