Amazon Echo has been released in Britain, and the company has tweaked its product to ensure it is well suited to UK consumers. Its voice assistant Alexa has travelled across the pond and picked up a new British accent, catering to our high expectations for technology to be more human.

Why type when you can talk? For many people in the West, the ability to make commands to Siri or Alexa is a convenient addition to their smartphone experience. But in emerging markets, it can be integral, enabling those who can't type to get online through voice functionality.

Voice recognition tech is becoming increasingly advanced, leading more people to use it in their everyday lives; the virtual assistant market is set to be worth $3.07 billion by 2020, and Amazon expects to sell ten million Echo devices in 2017 alone. But do people really want to chat to their devices?

As more and more people worldwide use virtual assistants such as Siri and Alexa, both within homes and on the go, it’s becoming increasingly important for brands to consider how these AIs respond with their ‘voices’. What should they sound like, and what kind of tone should they take with users?