I've actually pre-ordered the Mycroft Mark 2, although no chance to evaluate it yet.
I'm very interested in devices that can do this locally.
I'm not interested in Alexa/Google home anymore AT ALL - I've gone that route, they both work, but they want my dollars all the time, and it's become increasingly clear that if they can't get me making purchases through those devices - they will kill them off, or become ever more scummy in the attempt (Alexa is now including ads in the "did you know" section - "did you know" was already a fucking terrible decision to include, since it's going to marginally increase interaction at the expense of huge user dissatisfaction. But putting ads there has made me leave.)
So basically - I think if anything, we're seeing a speed run of 90s/2000s tech company boom/bust. A huge amount of money poured into the space with no real idea of how to sustainably profit, but the space itself doesn't feel like it's going anywhere.
It's really, really compelling to allow voice control in all sorts of interactions - but it needs to be very clearly working with me, and not trying to subvert my intent for profit. That might even mean it needs to fall back to something like "if this command, then that action" style usage. No more changing commands, no more bullshit ads, no more subversion of what I'm asking it to do.
It needs to obey me, not google or amazon. Otherwise it's a sales rep and not a digital assistant.
