Editing Introduction of Voice Assistants (section)

=== Early stages of virtual assistants ===
The development of virtual assistants has come a long way since the early days of computer science. The very first voice recognition system was [[IBM Shoebox|Shoebox]], developed by IBM in the 1960s, which could only recognize 16 words and a few digits. Nonetheless, it was a real revolution for the field.

As ASR technology progressed, text-based virtual assistants were implemented. The first text-based virtual assistant, or “chatbot”, of the modern era was Clippy<sup>[[Introduction of Voice Assistants#Notes|2]]</sup>, the famous Microsoft paperclip assistant, released in late ‘90 for Microsoft Office on Windows computers, but in fact, chatbots have existed since Alan Turing’s first machine in 1950<ref>Turing, A.M. (2009). Computing Machinery and Intelligence. In: Epstein, R., Roberts, G., Beber, G. (eds) Parsing the Turing Test. Springer, Dordrecht. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6710-5_3</nowiki>.</ref>. The first chatbot ever created was ELIZA<ref>Weizenbaum, Joseph (1966). ELIZA—a computer program for the study of natural language communication between man and machine. Commun. ACM 9, 1 (Jan. 1966), 36–45. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.1145/365153.365168</nowiki>.</ref>. It was based on a pattern-matching algorithm and it simulated a psychotherapy session, and could only answer a limited set of questions.

Since the very beginning of Computer Science, there has been a keen interest in communicating with machines, particularly through voice. This is due to the significant role that voice and spoken language play in human communication and culture<ref>Humphrey, J., & Chesher, C. (2021). Preparing for smart voice assistants: Cultural histories and media innovations. ''New Media & Society'', ''23''(7), 1971–1988</ref>. The first consumer-oriented voice recognition system was [[Dragon Dictate]]. This program had some recognition difficulties but later on, these were overcome, which is where the first Voice Assistants were created.

The very first system of speech recognition, which enabled later Voice Assistants to work on a vast scale, was developed by Windows engineers around 2004 and released in 2007 alongside the Windows Vista operating system. Although not precisely a virtual assistant, the technology implemented made it possible to give simple spoken instructions to the system and dictate text to it<ref>Brown, Robert. "Exploring New Speech Recognition And Synthesis APIs In Windows Vista". MSDN Magazine. Microsoft. Archived from the original on March 7, 2008. Retrieved June 26, 2015.</ref>.