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virtual digital assistant (VDA)

Virtual assistants are passive listening devices that respond once they recognize a command or wake word. They must be connected to the internet to conduct web searches and communicate with other devices or services. Privacy concerns have been raised due to their passive listening capabilities, but they generally require a wake word to actively start recording[2].

Popular virtual digital assistants include Siri, Google Assistant, Cortana, Facebook M, Blackberry Assistant, Braina, Teneo, Speaktoit Assistant, Hound, and Amazon Echo (Alexa). These assistants can perform tasks such as scheduling events, managing emails, setting reminders, playing music, controlling smart home devices, and more[3].

For businesses, digital assistants can automate tasks such as resetting passwords, system status updates, outage alerts, ordering supplies, and knowledge management, making them available around the clock. They can also integrate with various business systems like human capital management (HCM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and customer relationship management (CRM) to streamline operations[4].A virtual digital assistant (VDA) is a sophisticated program designed to assist users by understanding natural language and performing tasks or answering questions based on voice commands. These assistants leverage advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, including natural language processing (NLP), natural language understanding, and machine learning, to provide personalized and conversational interactions. They are capable of learning from user interactions to improve their responses and services over time[1][4].

NVIDIA, a leader in AI and computing technology, has been at the forefront of developing and enhancing virtual digital assistants through its various platforms and tools. NVIDIA’s approach to virtual assistants emphasizes the integration of AI to recognize human speech, understand intent, and deliver precise, personalized responses. This is achieved through NVIDIA’s AI software and workflows designed specifically for intelligent virtual assistants[2].

One of NVIDIA’s notable contributions to the field is the Riva platform, which is utilized in constructing responses using Riva’s speech AI, Rasa’s dialog manager, and Haystack’s information-retrieval-for-question-answering (IRQA) search pipeline. This combination allows for the development of virtual assistants that can effectively interpret and respond to user queries through a conversational AI application. The Riva Virtual Assistant example demonstrates how to use Riva AI Services, specifically ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition), NLP, and TTS (Text-to-Speech), to build a complete conversational AI application. This includes receiving speech input from the user, interpreting the query using intention recognition and slot-filling approaches, computing a response, and delivering it back to the user in a natural voice[3][5].

Furthermore, NVIDIA has introduced the Omniverse Avatar Cloud Engine (ACE), a suite of cloud-native AI models and services designed to facilitate the creation and customization of lifelike virtual assistants and digital humans. ACE leverages NVIDIA’s Unified Compute Framework, providing access to a wide range of AI technologies necessary for developing highly realistic and interactive avatars. This includes NVIDIA Riva for speech AI applications, NVIDIA Metropolis for computer vision, NVIDIA Merlin for recommender systems, NVIDIA NeMo Megatron for large language models with natural language understanding, and NVIDIA Omniverse for AI-enabled animation. The ACE platform aims to transform interactions across various sectors, including gaming, entertainment, banking, transportation, and hospitality, by enabling the development of virtual assistants that can understand multiple languages, respond to speech prompts, interact with environments, and make intelligent recommendations[6].

Citations:

[1] https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/glossary/virtual-assistant/

[2] https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/ai-data-science/ai-workflows/intelligent-virtual-assistant/

[3] https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/launchpad/ai/intelligent-virtual-assistant/

[4] https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/explainer-what-is-a-virtual-assistant/

[5] https://docs.nvidia.com/deeplearning/riva/user-guide/docs/samples/sample-apps/virtual-assistant/README.html

[6] https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/virtual-assistants-and-digital-humans-on-pace-to-ace-turing-test-with-new-nvidia-omniverse-avatar-cloud-engine

[7] https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/explainer-what-is-a-virtual-assistant/283081

[8] https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/ron-ai-personal-assistant/

Citations:

[1] https://workgrid.com/article/what-is-a-digital-assistant/

[2] https://www.lifewire.com/virtual-assistants-4138533