Interestingly, for the items you listed, I am skeptical that needing to jump through the hoops of NLP would result in a more convenient experience for some user

Interestingly, for the items you listed, I am skeptical that needing to jump through the hoops of NLP would result in a more convenient experience for some users. It feels like the reason why some of these voice systems actually have utility is because they are usable in scenarios where you typically can't/don't want to type (such as while driving, lying on the couch at your house, etc). When you require somebody to type in their query, I'm struggling to see why an Alexa/AI chat thread would perform better than just a search engine with AI features. Or how, practically, it's different than just a "thread" where what you type goes to a search engine.