Using intelligent personal assistants to assist the elderlies An evaluation of Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Microsoft Cortana, and Apple Siri

For elderly people, social isolation is one significant factor in the deterioration of their life's quality. It has a profound impact on the general health and is produced by the diminution of social interactions. Nowadays, there is technology that can retrieve contextual data from the user's environment and interact with him in some simple, yet effective manners. The intelligent personal assistants can interact with the person by means of natural voice language. Previously, it was created a model for the adoption of electronic intelligent assistants by the elderly, as well a preliminary evaluation of the features of the intelligent personal assistants, currently available in the consumer market. In this article, it is evaluated the option of using the current consumer digital assistants to implement the proposed model. Several assistants were examined (Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Apple), and their functionalities evaluated by creating four interaction scenarios and assessing the assistants' compliance with these scenarios.

I. Introduction

In the elderly people population, are frequently found many cases of social isolation and rejection, requiring support from family, friends, or social agents like government entities [1]. The social isolation is commonly correlated with the weakening of the person’s mental health, which can cause mental disorders like depression [3, [4] . Promoting the individual’s social engagement motivates persons to have more intricate interactions, mobilizing the cognitive faculties and supporting them to preserve a good mental health [5, [6] . Currently, with the evolution of information technologies, it can be found several applications to stimulate cognitive faculties [7, 8]. The use of information technologies by elderly people can benefit them in the interaction with other people, by providing a communication medium [9].