"Totally Unnecessary" or "Simply Convenient" – About Users and Non-Users of Voice Assistants

Abstract

Voice assistants, and in particular smart speakers, have become very popular in the recent past. Their growing ability to interact with users in natural language makes them a convenient interface for control of entertainment systems, appliances, smart homes, IoT applications, and many Internet applications. Nevertheless, they are controversial devices, not only because of the obvious challenges for security and privacy of their users. This paper investigates the concerns and motivations of users of voice assistants, but also those of non-users who are a group that is often disregarded in an engineering context. Following a theoretical model of non-usage, a representative nationwide survey was conducted in Austria to obtain quantitative insight into the groups of users and non-users of voice assistants. While the results confirm several former works regarding the sociodemographic characteristics of the groups, we find that only 75% of the non-users actively resist against the technology, whereas 20% rather feel excluded from using it. One of the surprising results also was that users and non-users share the same security and privacy concerns.