 There's a lot of really nerdy talk happening around artificial intelligence and virtual assistants these days. But most people know these virtual assistants by their consumer-friendly personas, like Apple Siri or Amazon Alexa. Apple Siri was first introduced in 2011, and since then people have either found her incredibly useful or not so useful. Alexa, how old are you? I was released November 6, 2014. So compared to Siri, Alexa's a little bit younger. Both of these virtual assistants can perform an amazing amount of tasks. You can ask general interest questions, ask for the news, set timers, you can even use them to control your smart lights. But they're also different in a lot of ways, and there's one that I definitely use more than the other. So here's what you need to know. Siri is available on what I call iDevices. Most people access her through their iPhone or their iPad or even their Apple Watch. Alexa's not available on phones. You can access her through this Echo speaker here or through the new Echo Dot speaker, which I don't have with me, or through this Amazon Tap speaker. Siri is also available on Apple TV. And Alexa's available on the Amazon Fire TV. So same deal. So how much do these virtual assistants cost? It's a good question. In short, the software is free, but you still have to pony up for the devices that they're available on. Yep, exactly. And iPhones and iPads tend to be pretty expensive. The Echo speaker here costs $179, and the other products I mentioned cost less than that. The biggest difference between them really is how they're meant to be used. With the exception of Apple TV, Siri is something you can take on the go with you. She's in your pocket, she's in the car, she's on your wrist. Whereas Alexa is something that's really useful in the home, and these devices work when they're connected to a stable Wi-Fi connection. Also, when you talk to Siri, you have to be pretty close to it, whether it's on the iPhone or whether it's on the Apple TV remote, and it has to be your voice. But the Echo here has a crazy array of microphones at the top of it, so you can literally shout to it from across the room and Alexa will respond, and it could be anybody's voice. So what can these virtual assistants do? Well, if you ask Siri to make a phone call or send a text message on your behalf, she can do that. Alexa can't really do that, unless you're using a specific Wi-Fi calling app. But on the flip side, if you ask Siri what today's top news is, she can't read the news aloud to you. She just shows you a bunch of links. She can do better than that. Alexa, what's today's top news? Here's your flash briefing in NPR news from TuneIn. Alexa, stop. Okay, I have to hand it to you. That's pretty impressive. But Siri can give you directions when you're in the car based on what your location is at that moment. Alexa can give you travel estimates based on current traffic conditions, but you do have to go into the Alexa mobile app and enter in your current location. Now, when it comes to interacting with apps, these work differently. Siri can play music for you through Apple Music, and she can control your smart lights for you, provided that the smart lights work with Apple's HomeKit framework. But when you start to ask Siri stuff like, call me an Uber, or play a Spotify playlist, she kind of stops just short of doing it. Alexa works differently with a lot of third-party apps. So you can, for example, ask Alexa to call you an Uber or play a specific Spotify playlist, and she'll do that for you. Also, when you ask Siri to add something to your shopping list, she just adds something to your shopping list. She doesn't go and buy it for you. Not surprisingly, Alexa takes it a step further. So you can say to Alexa, reorder garbage bags, and provided that you purchased them before, she'll just reorder them for you through Amazon. Okay, so one cool thing that Siri can do now is she can answer your questions about Game of Thrones, like, is Jon Snow dead? I don't know. I just hope someone is setting up doggy daycare for a ghost. I don't watch Game of Thrones. You can also ask Siri and Alexa silly questions, like, who is Tim Cook, or who is Jeff Bezos, or will you marry me, or tell me a joke. And that's all good and fun. But for the companies who make these virtual assistants, they're taking this AI stuff pretty seriously. So which one of these is better? Well, it's tough to say, mostly because they're so different. Like I said earlier, Siri is great for on the go, and Alexa is great in your house. But at the same time, Amazon is trying to make Alexa a little bit more accessible on the go, and Apple is trying to make Siri accessible in the house. So generally speaking, it's still pretty early days for these virtual assistants. I happen to love Alexa, and I definitely use Alexa a lot more than I use Siri. But Alexa still isn't super useful to me outside of the home, at least not yet. If you happen to use Siri or Alexa a lot, and you have some tips or tricks you'd like to share, leave them in the comments below. And don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel. I'm Lauren Good for The Verge, and thanks for watching.