AI is transforming the way individuals work in all industries, whether coding and design, HR, marketing or customer service. Its quick adoption has sped up workflows, enabled smarter decisions and personalized user experiences. Despite these developments, most of the population continues to interact with AI via keyboards and screens, a method that feels distant, tedious and far removed from how we naturally interact with one another.
New research from Jabra and the London School of Economics (LSE) highlights this disconnect. It revealed that 14 percent of knowledge workers would rather talk to generative AI tools than type. More importantly, it uncovered that the level of trust in AI increases by 33 percent when the instructions are given orally rather than in written form. These discoveries suggest a significant change on the horizon. Based on all historical technology adoption curves, we’re at the tipping point at which voice interaction with AI will become mainstream within the next three years.
How Is Voice Interaction Changing the Way We Work With AI?
Voice interaction is bridging the gap between humans and AI by increasing user trust by 33 percent and enabling more expressive, natural communication. As workflows shift from text to speech, AI is moving from a simple tool to a collaborative teammate, allowing employees to analyze complex data and summarize projects without typing.
Bridging the Gap Between Humans and AI
Currently, most AI interactions are based on text via written prompts, typed instructions and command lines. Although useful, these interfaces aren’t consistent with the way human beings communicate in real life. Speaking allows for nuance, iteration and subtle expression, which facilitates speed and a more natural way of interacting. Behavioral studies confirm speech’s impact compared to typing. When it comes to talking, humans will be more expressive and trusting. We can now transfer this expressiveness to our interactions with AI.
The implications are significant. As AI grows in intelligence, it will shift from tool to teammate, and we will shift our judgement from “hours saved” to “value created.” By using voice to interact with AI, employees can ask questions to dig through complex data sets, get assistance with summarizing project updates or glean insights from written content — all without a single keystroke. This way, the interactions will become faster, more based on natural instinct and likely even more accurate.
What a Voice-First Workplace Might Look Like
In the future office where voice interactions with AI are king, the need for constant typing will become obsolete. When you sit in your office, you won’t hear the click of keyboards, but rather people having real conversations to get more work done at a higher quality. Employees can give directions, ask questions or get summaries via speech, and AI will have the ability to transcribe, sort and provide answers as everything is spoken aloud. Meetings — even in-person chats with colleagues — will also boom in productivity. AI will be a superbly efficient assistant, creating briefings with detailed recaps of key action items and ownership per deliverable.
The benefits also go far beyond mundane tasks like note-taking. For decades, we’ve had the ability to outsource labor and production, and we can now do the same with intelligence. The future office will have human-agent hybrid teams. These units will unlock deeper potential and add exponential value to organizations.
Interacting with AI vocally instead of typing can also open doors for better workplace accessibility. Employees with difficulty typing their thoughts, including neurodiverse and multilingual individuals, can engage more effectively with voice-enabled devices. The potential also exists for using multiple modes where workers can easily alternate between voice and typing based on the use case.
This change matches previous trends in the evolution of human-computer interaction. Typing gave way to touch screens for engaging with technology. With every step, technology moves closer to natural human behavior. Voice is the next logical step in this progression.
Preparing for Voice Integration
The use of voice-first technologies requires a plan. Start small by implementing voice-integrated AI in select processes like note-taking and detailed meeting summaries to test it and learn. While it may feel unfamiliar at first, you can normalize the behavior across an organization through dedicated leadership modeling, creating guidelines in voice etiquette and the implementation of pilot projects to overcome social friction. These pilots can start to normalize speaking to AI in the workplace, contributing to confidence and technical preparedness.
Direct training is also essential, guiding team members on the strengths and opportunities that exist. Your privacy policies should highlight voice data collection, storage and usage purposes. Employee handbooks should clarify controls and consent rules. Gather and implement constructive feedback from employees to tweak implementation strategies in real time based on measures of comfort and perceived effectiveness.
AI is set to entirely revolutionize how we work. Giving employees multiple modes of interaction will only increase overall adoption, and taking a human-centric approach to AI, where voice is a core way of interacting with it, will only help us manage this massive transformation and ensure everyone thrives with AI in the future.
Looking Ahead
AI is already changing the way work happens, and companies must recognize and harness its potential. After all, the future of work won’t just be powered by AI; it will be powered by the conversations people have with it.
