We were discussing the personal coder here. In another extension of a similar idea, the assistant can also become the store for personal data – be it identity, images, video or documents. The notion that the assistant has an unlimited storage is equivalent to connecting cloud drives with the assistant to store and retrieve personal data. These include the ability to connect, save, extract, transform and load user data from a variety of stores and automatically back-up to the assistant's personal drive space for the user. 

Once we have a notion of a personal assistant, it is easy to view other roles suitable for it. For example automation in the cloud proceeds with the installation of an agent on any device even if they are cross platform or cross company. It may therefore be imagined that the assistant can also manage other devices within the premise. This is helpful to make the assistant as the point of contact for the user. 

The expansion of roles for the personal assistant leads us into robotics and computer vision space as well. From butlers to life savers, robots are popular in the imaginations presented in the movies. To some degree the addition of a simple camera on a standalone desktop personal assistant can be an improved capability rather than a voice activated assistant. We use face recognition for example with laptops to allow users to sign in. This works well as one of the options to sign in when there is sufficient visibility and light. It may not be sufficient for more complex image recognition algorithms such as Active Contour Model across images but the need to track movable objects is reduced when we have a stationary observer in addition to a listener. Moreover, the primary role of the assistant is in focusing on the owner rather than objects and other devices with which it can talk via programmability options as mentioned earlier 

There are essentially two points for consideration where we demarcate robots from assistants- the first is on the basis of whether the assistant is mobile or not. The second is whether the assistant is connected seamlessly to computing at cloud scale. In this way the assistant separates itself from robots as well as devices that claim to have connectivity via internet of things. The expansion of roles and the introduction of capabilities does not take away the identity of the assistant as someone responsible for the users' commands and their data. Eventually the need to carry a phone could be replaced with being able to summon an assistant at the nearest available device