I wonder how many people are actually using these voice systems. In public, obviously zero. Ok google was convenient for a while while driving, but I havnt used it for months.

Are these alexa/home gimmicks?

Id have to see reviews, quality, stats, visualize a purchase which is not easy to do over a speaker.

Turning of the light is already in the palm of your hand. I have a smaller 12 room house, light switches are right by the door of each room. Convenience might be to turn off all the lights in the house at once as I forget to turn off one or two most of the time. That would still cost a small fortune to replace all the bulbs.

In my experience these voice assistants are wildly popular among older and less technically literate people. I have an aunt who has around a dozen alexa-enabled speakers, tvs, and tablets around the house and constantly talks to them—weather, news, turning on the radio and music, ordering things on amazon. She doesn’t appear to be bothered by having to change her behavior to suit the assistant, including occasionally ordering the wrong item on amazon (!) and simply saying “play (genre here)” rather than album oriented listening she normally does, which disturbed me a little bit. Other older people in my life have similar behavior, and on a related point I’ve gotten at least one assistant enabled device as a gift for each birthday and christmas for the last several years (I give them away, I already have too many damn electronics).