The researchers from Stanford University asked the four main voice assistants of Apple (Siri), Amazon (Alexa), Google and Microsoft (Cortana) a simple medical question about whether the user should get screened for a certain type of cancer. They were then judged on their ability to understand the question, provide accurate information through web searches and then verbally communicate it.
The only voice assistant that did not understand the query was Amazon’s Alexa, which would repeatedly answer, “Hmm, I don’t know that”. The other assistants performed consistently well providing guidance from websites with information from the United States Preventive Services Task Force roughly 7 in 10 times. However, Siri was not able to provide this information verbally, whereas both Cortana and Google assistant were able to verbally communicate the guidelines 45 percent and 64 percent of the time respectively.
“These results suggest there are opportunities for technology companies to work closely with healthcare guideline developers and healthcare professionals to standardize their voice assistants’ responses to important health-related questions,” Grace Hong, one of the researchers of the study, told VentureBeat July 18.
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