The trend: 2025 was the year legacy voice assistants—in smartphones and smart home devices—began morphing into full AI agents. 

Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and Google’s Assistant (now Gemini) all shifted from scripted command-and-control hubs toward conversational, multimodal systems that sit at the center of smart homes and AI chatbots.

We forecast voice assistant usage on smartphones will rise to 48.7% of internet users by 2029, while smart speaker usage drops to 30.7% over the same period. 

Here’s how voice assistants transformed in 2025.

Apple’s Siri and Apple Intelligence: Apple continued weaving Siri into Apple Intelligence, promising an assistant that understands personal context, sees what’s on-screen, and can act inside apps. 

• Delays meant the “new Siri” rollout slipped, even as reports surfaced that Apple will lean on Google’s Gemini model in the background.​
• Apple’s advantage remains tight integration between hardware and software. Siri can blend privacy-centric context from Messages, Photos, and system services in ways rivals cannot easily match.​

What’s next: Enhanced voice functionality can trickle down to tens of thousands of third-party apps, which will lay the foundation for adoption across Apple’s ecosystem. 

Amazon’s Alexa+: Alexa+ is a genAI upgrade that makes Amazon’s assistant more conversational, context-aware, and capable of handling multistep tasks via natural language. 

• The service adds a new subscription layer for premium AI features while keeping a free “classic” Alexa tier, a push to monetize an installed base spanning hundreds of millions of devices.​
• Alexa remains deeply embedded in Echo speakers, Fire TVs, and thousands of compatible smart home devices, with AI now driving routines, shopping assistance, and personalized recommendations.

What’s next: Time will tell if Amazon’s AI subscription strategy will pay off, and this could depend on whether its customers find value in the additional AI utility. 

Google Gemini: In 2025, Google began retiring Google Assistant in favor of Gemini across phones, speakers, and smart displays, turning its smart home into a testbed for generative AI.

• Gemini for Home brings flexible, contextual voice commands, better scene understanding from Nest cameras, and a redesigned Google Home app that makes proactive suggestions and routines easier to manage.​
• Google’s ecosystem advantage is data and reach: Gemini sits atop Search, YouTube, Maps, and Android, allowing deeply contextual responses and a mature Google Home ecosystem.​

What’s next: Google is a key player in AI with Gemini. Its massive ecosystem gives it a runway for adoption and a near limitless supply of user training data.

Takeaway for brands: As assistants grow more agentic and context-aware, they’ll influence product discovery, household routines, and impulse decisions across retail, entertainment, and services. 

Brands will need to optimize for conversational queries, structure content so AI agents can act on it, and prepare for a world where recommendations come through ambient channels rather than screens.