A friend in need, virtually!

India is home to an estimated 13 crore senior citizens. Chennai-based Usharani is one of them. Like many of her peers, the retired bank employee carried a diary, among other things, to plan her days effectively and easily. But that’s often a pain as she forgets to carry the book and has to ‘remember’ to look up things. She has a smartphone, gifted by her son staying abroad, but “keying things in and updating stuff” is a hassle. “I am not a smart person,” she says. “All I wanted was a smart assistant.”

Life’s changed

And she did find one soon, thanks again, to her son. “Life’s changed for great” is how Usharani describes her experience using Amazon’s Echo Dot, powered by Alexa, the artificially intelligent virtual assistant created by the tech-to-biotech conglomerate. Now she doesn’t keep the diary. Nor does she have to rely on friends and family to remind her about mundane chores. Alexa helps her set reminders — for a series of tasks such as taking medicines (for various periods and durations), paying bills, renewing insurance premiums, attending weddings and listening to her favourite MS Subbulakshmi songs in the morning or whenever she feels like. All she has to do is “tell” Alexa what she wants.

Thousands of senior citizens in India would vouch for this experience now. Virtual assistants like Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa are changing their life like never before. For most elders, the ability to set reminders orally is a blessing. Considering that a large chunk of India’s senior population regularly takes medicines, many have to change their diet regimes and drug routines quite often, and skipping the schedule because of being absent-minded is a natural cause of embarrassment, affecting their self-esteem and confidence. Virtual assistants help solve this problem easily. All the user says is “Alexa, remind me to take my medicine by six in the morning.”

Ease of use

Psychologists say most seniors can manage their routines fairly well without human help, which is costly, especially in urban centres. Smart assistants can make a difference here. Obviously, the cost of hiring a maid or a domestic help just to meet such needs is a lot more. Equally important is the fact that virtual assistants can be synced to smart home devices, which saves the elderly a great deal of time and energy.

Take the simple task of switching the bedroom light off after one has hit the bed. Many senior citizens find it a worry to get out of bed after finishing a book or a prayer and move towards the switches to turn off lights. They can now ask the virtual assistant to turn off lights or control the AC or even fans, all by sitting or lying in bed and while on a chair. Such facilities help them avoid or reduce cases of accidents significantly.

Similarly easy is keeping track of the news or getting weather updates, tasks for which they would earlier have to tune into television or radio or use a smartphone, which is a strain on their eyes. A virtual assistant like Alexa can fetch periodic, updated news and weather reports for them.

This is a big deal now and going forward. Tech industry body Nasscom forecasts that by 2020, India will have some 2.7 billion home devices connected to the internet (IoT devices). Almost all these devices can be controlled by virtual assistants, and senior citizens would be important beneficiaries of this change. So far, tech companies have sold more than nine million smart speakers globally and India is fast catching up on this front, signalling a sea change in the way its citizens, especially the seniors, are going to live.

Language concerns

That said, there are some concerns. For one, many doubt whether these devices would build some unwanted dependency among the seniors. But experts ask us to trust the wisdom and emotional maturity of our elders, who are quite capable of dealing with devices, like they took to televisions and computers. Another, genuine, worry is, most seniors are not comfortable in communicating with virtual assistants in English. Even highly educated elders prefer to converse in vernacular languages. If smart virtual assistants really have to make an impact in the lives of the elderly in India, they have to understand the vernacular.

But that’s not far away. Already, a few companies are tweaking Alexa and similar tools to make them talk in Hindi and other languages. Amazon officials have said that Alexa now understands names of places, people and events and even phrases in Hindi and regional languages. Still, the idea hasn’t taken off to a large extent, as things stand now. Google is also planning to make its Assistant speak Hindi, to start with. A few companies are now building skills for Alexa and Google Assistant that understand Hindi and other regional languages. Mumbai based Agrahyah Technologies is an example. It is building products and content in local languages that work in tune with Alexa Skills.

Beyond Alexa and Google, a host of voice-enabled smart solutions are being developed in India now, many of which can be useful for senior citizens. Travel portal Yatra recently rolled out a personalised voice assistant called Yuva (Yatra Universal Virtual Assistant), which allows users to use both voice and text to book tickets.

Several companies, from startups such as Manthan AI Labs, Ixigo, Liv.ai (whose speech recognition tool understands Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Marathi, Gujarati, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu) and behemoths such as Reliance Jio are developing voice-based solutions. Clearly, most of these solutions would be a shot in the arm for India’s elders, enabling them to negotiate life better, faster and nicer.

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