WOW!! Get ready to start talking to your car,TV. And fridge in 2017

Voice-activated technology is nothing new. It’s been around for a number of years, made mainstream with the arrival of Apple's Siri assistance for iOS gadgets in 2011, followed by Google Now on Android devices the following year.

Although it what was perceived as a gimmick at first – largely because the novelty of using services such as Siri soon wore off after launch – voice technology has been gaining some momentum in recent years.

As the technology has advanced, it has become more clever, and is now much better at understanding different voices and accents thrown at it.

However, it has only been within the last year that it has truly taken off with the success of Amazon's Echo speaker, which features the ingenious Alexa smart assistant.

Alexa has taken the world by storm due to the technology's ability to accurately comprehend human voices and thus translate the needs of the user without needing physical activation.

This has spurred a new range of voice-activated devices at the Consumer Electronics Show ( CES 2017 ), taking place in Las Vegas this week.

On Tuesday at CES, Korean electronics company LG announced a new fridge that's powered by Amazon Alexa, as well as a robot butler that uses Alexa's voice recognition technology to complete household tasks such as turning on the air conditioner or changing a dryer cycle.

On the same day, Chinese tech firm Lenovo unveiled Smart Assistant, a speaker that houses Amazon’s Alexa brains in audio-expert Harman Kardon’s hardware.

Ford has also teamed up with Amazon to enable drivers to listen to audiobooks inside the vehicle, search and transfer local destinations to navigation, request news, play music and add items to their shopping list using vocal commands.

unveiled Spot, a hybrid microphone and speaker that uses Google Assistant, liberating from one static place, bringing it to every room of the house.

Now you no longer need to shout at your smart speaker in order for it to hear you from another room. With Spot, you can communicate with various smart devices around your home from any place in the house (as long as you have a Spot installed there). Turn off the lights, change the temperature, set alarms, all with speech.

Google claims that, over time, Assistant will be integrated into other smart devices, such as smartwatches and Android-powered in-car infotainment systems. And of course, many are hoping that Google's own smart speaker, Google Home, will launch in the UK in 2017.

CES organisers, the Consumer Technology Association, predict that smart home devices such as the Echo will cause a 1.5% growth in industry revenue in the US alone this year.

"More and more consumers are discovering the remarkable benefits connected products deliver, providing any time, anywhere access to information, entertainment and each other," said Gary Shapiro, chief executive of the Consumer Technology Association.

"Our forecast reinforces our belief that connectivity is going to be one of the driving trends of our time."