A computer that talks back is a computer that can communicate with a user in a natural way, using speech. This type of computer interaction has been around for many years, but has only recently become commonplace due to the advent of digital assistants, such as Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and Google’s Assistant.

Digital assistants use voice recognition software to understand what a user is saying, and natural language processing (NLP) software to interpret the user’s intent. They then respond in a natural way, using text-to-speech (TTS) software to convert text into speech.

Digital assistants are available on many different …