Voice recognition is an extremely solved problem. A lot of the hard part of the AI---the stuff that appeared impossible in the '80s---works consistently on Google, Alexa, and Siri. It just needs to know enough about you to make intelligent guesses at your intent.
... which means it needs access to all that big data the big company collected on you and users like you.
There are technologies that are owned by big companies that will leverage them for ecosystem lock-in. Want a neat personal assistant? Sure; just use your Google account. Want some untethered VR? No problem; just login via Facebook. And that's generally how things will be; you don't have to use it, but you'll be off the cutting edge if you don't.
Because ecosystems are where the money is, and cutting-edge tech costs money. That's the iron law of capitalism and technological progress.
(I'm still waiting for my Linux phone. Thought it might be shipped to me in 2020, but with COVID slowing down production, 2021 looks more likely. But at least I'll feel some moral superiority once I have the thing in my hands that other people already have if they just give up and buy into a big-data vendor's ecosystem. ;) )
What this really means is that there is no untethered VR device for privacy-minded folks which make up a tiny portion of the overall VR users.
And there are plenty of people who aren't techies who still don't want all their info going to facebook.
Tethered to Zuckerberg.
