Who knows if IoT will ever live up to its early hype. But as we move further into 2016, it’s clear that IoT — the Internet of Things — is becoming ever more real. Not only are more connected devices entering the market, but those networked devices are becoming more capable and easier to control.

The era of payphones seems remote and almost inconceivable. In the not too distant future, we may hardly remember quaint activities such as: manually adjusting our thermostats, locking our doors with a physical key, fiddling with a TV remote to find a show, buying laundry detergent refills at the store, or using an app to pay our credit card bill. Instead of doing any of those things, we’ll interact with intelligent assistants using natural language to have them complete those tasks for us.

Just last week Amazon and Capital One announced an interesting partnership. The financial services company is leveraging the Echo, Amazon’s connected home hub, to enable customers to perform banking transactions by talking to Alexa. Capital One customers can check credit card balances or pay their bills by asking Echo’s built-in intelligent assistant and providing a secure PIN.

In seemingly unrelated news, Fast Company wrote about the startup company Prompt that is creating a messaging-based chatbot assistant to help manage your entire world. Users sign up for Prompt via SMS or by installing a bot in Slack. They then communicate with the bot using specific commands such as “@uber from Union Square to SFO” or “@flightstats DL1223.” But users can also control connected home devices by “conversing” with the Prompt bot. They can control their thermostat with an “@nest” command and manage Philips Hue bulbs via “@Hue.”

The common denominator with connected devices is their need for a central, conversational assistant to make them easily accessible to humans. Intelligent assistants are the natural user interface of IoT. Users will come to rely on central hubs to help them control the smart things around them. These hubs, which could be called broadly-capable orchestration assistants, will almost certainly be conversational.

It remains to be seen whether voice or messaging/texting will be the preferred conversational mode for the intelligent assistants that help us navigate IoT. Voice may emerge as a clear winner for specific scenarios, such as in the car and home. Messaging may be the preferred interface if smartphones continue to be our omnipresent companions. Whether voice or text, we’ll be conversing with our intelligent assistants more and more in the days ahead. It’s no surprise, then, that companies are positioning themselves to provide the intelligent assistants that we’ll engage with most frequently.

Categories: Conversational Intelligence, Intelligent Assistants, Articles, Mobile + Location

Tags: Amazon, intelligent Assistants, IoT, Capital One