People Really Want The Rock as the Voice of Their Smart Speaker

Maybe Google was onto something when it used John Legend as the voice of its smart speakers: Nearly 1 in 3 participants in a recent Adobe smart speaker survey said that they want a celebrity as the voice of their AI assistant.

Participants of the Adobe Analytics June 2019 Voice Report also had some clear preferences for celebrities they want to answer when they ask for help from a voice assistant: 47% voted for Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to answer questions about the weather, their daily calendar and more.

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Will Smith ranked second with 43%, followed by Arnold Schwarzenegger with 35%, George Clooney with 33%, Chris Rock with 31% and Oprah Winfrey with 30%.

The report also highlighted that voice assistants are increasingly becoming a key component of a variety of consumer electronics devices. 44% of participants use the voice assistant on their phones every day, and 28% called it an indispensable feature of mobile devices.

25% of participants said they considered voice capabilities an important feature when buying a TV. For car purchases, that number even reaches 31%, with 30% of respondents identifying it as an important factor impacting the purchase of their next speaker.

Adobe also asked consumers about ads on smart speakers, with some mixed results: 25% of respondents said that they had heard a commercial on their smart speaker before, and 35% said that they are okay with voice ads in exchange for free services. Of course, this also means that 65% of consumers reject this kind of advertising, which could explain why companies like Amazon and Google have been very careful about adding advertising to their voice assistants.

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