Story highlights Virtual assistants are the most significant development of the digital revolution

Workplaces must adapt and establish working relations with them

We will be able to use them in every aspect of our personal lives

Leading players Google, Microsoft and Apple are seeking control of this massive new market

Chris Brauer is Director of Innovation in the Institute of Management Studies (IMS) at Goldsmiths, University of London. He writes for CNN's Going Global on a research collaboration with Mindshare titled Project Virtual Assistant, the findings of which can be can be found here. The opinions in this commentary are solely those of the author.

(CNN) Ambitious companies that ignore the imminent rise of Virtual Assistants as the gateway to the Internet run the same risks as those that dismissed the disruptive innovations of Google in 1998.

The current generation of VAs are consumer products like Apple Siri, Google Now, Microsoft Cortana. Smaller innovators like Viv Labs are pursuing a less hardware or operating system dependent architecture. In the enterprise marketplace VA capabilities feature in technologies like IBM's Watson and Amelia from IPsoft.

In 2014, there has been a surge in acquisitions of related artificial intelligence technologies by all the major technology companies. Rapid advancements in the underlying technologies have also been taking place -- from neural networks to natural language processing to wearables and emotional recognition systems.

The launch of the first mainstream high-impact VA is perhaps four or five years away.

What will a VA do?

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