Even with the most common use cases it doesn't even try. One coder, one evening, simple pattern matching + a few rules and it could be improved so much. I simply don't understand how they can keep it so bad for so long. There were more examples like this, I don't really have a list since I gave up on it.

Your example requests are at best extreme outliers, and not good tests of smart home assistants.

It seems like ChatGPT could be a giant leap ahead of the current crop of home assistants.

Exactly what I've been thinking in the last 10 years. It was ludicrously bad, and not improving even on obvious things. They just sat on it.

They began as very much what you describe though, to generate pr and make their underlying ecosystems seem more attractive and advanced.

[0] https://archive.is/UlCpM / https://www.amazon.science/blog/alexas-head-scientist-on-con...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/qai/2022/12/06/amazon-stock-new...

Maybe the new tech worked _really well_.

Apple appears to try to make Siri an well defined interface to specific apps that offer specific services.

Looking at https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sirikit you can see specific intents and workflows that Siri can hook into. This makes it rather limited but for the things that it can do, it does. To that end, Apple isn't trying to monetize Siri - its trying to be a hands free interface to specific tasks that apps can do.

Amazon was trying to make Alexa a general tool (and they've reduced those capabilities over the years) running on AWS with additional goals of providing additional monetization routes. Things like "A book by an author you follow was released, would you like to add it to your cart?" Personally, I never found the chat more than a curiosity and even less so now that there is no knowledge engine backing the general knowledge questions.